The Iraq thread 4

[bn880 5]

The way the fabrics in the pic (uniform and the sign) don't look like they're to full human scale at all.

Plus all of the stuff that you can see on the 'soldier' in that pic is in that toy box, and looks exactly the same.

I reckon it's less likely a site hack, more likely insurgents trying to get some prisoners freed without having any real bargaining chips.

Seriously? well, if you think for a moment you will realize that's not likely. It could be just to gainsupport, but no prisonner will ever bereleased as the military knows their soldiers doesn't it.

[turms 0]

Talk about psy-ops

[Baphomet 0]

Regardless of whether it was a site hack or not, think about how stupid mainstream media will look if that picture does turn out to be that of a doll and they used it without analysing the veracity of it. Regardless of who is responsible for it... it will be something of a black eye for mainstream media. I think at least.

I immediately saw something different with the picture when I first saw it on web before I even knew about the existence of that doll. You'd think the people responsible for posting that stuff on news sites might be a bit more intuitive than joe average like myself.

front page on the Drudge Report website. Is this where any of you first saw the comparison? This is news to me.

The less than tasteful (and FP forums worthy) Ogrish.com is posting this headline:

February 01, 2005

Diorama Action Man Misleads Media - Militants Fake Hostage Image

Media falls for hostage hoax.

View News

The "hostage" that can be seen in the image below is actually a

"Diorama Action Man", see 2nd and 3rd image.

[Akira 0]

lol

Oh man. Thats rich. I'll have to check the Evening News for this one...

[bn880 5]

Who cares that the media reported it, most of them reported properly "claim to have captured". Which is what this appears to be, a claim.

Really funny though, it's definately a morale game by one side or another, or at least this will have a bad impact for the resistance/insurgents.

[Baphomet 0]

Not good old AIM.com in it's headlines

U.S. GI Held Hostage

Rebels Threaten to Behead Him

[da12thMonkey 1943]

The way the fabrics in the pic (uniform and the sign) don't look like they're to full human scale at all.

Plus all of the stuff that you can see on the 'soldier' in that pic is in that toy box, and looks exactly the same.

I reckon it's less likely a site hack, more likely insurgents trying to get some prisoners freed without having any real bargaining chips.

Seriously?  well, if you think for a moment you will realize that's not likely.  It could be just to gainsupport, but no prisonner will  ever bereleased as the military knows their soldiers doesn't it.

I know no prisoners will be released and I dare say the insurgents know it as well. However they can always try to pull something like this in the off chance that the US might fall for it an yield, however unlikely it is, what do they have to loose in attepting such a ploy?

Despite the fact that most of their attempts to gain from kidknapping have failed, and the coalition having stated that they will not bargain for captives, insurgents have continued to place demands on the coalition to get the captives freed. Why would this be any different? They still stand to gain from taking western prisoners in terms of the media attention they get in doing so, and renewed criticism on the coalition to 'value' the lives of westerners in Iraq more than their policies on dealing with kidknappers.

[bn880 5]

Here is a more real one..

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=hot....n=16167

[bn880 5]

The way the fabrics in the pic (uniform and the sign) don't look like they're to full human scale at all.

Plus all of the stuff that you can see on the 'soldier' in that pic is in that toy box, and looks exactly the same.

I reckon it's less likely a site hack, more likely insurgents trying to get some prisoners freed without having any real bargaining chips.

Seriously? well, if you think for a moment you will realize that's not likely. It could be just to gainsupport, but no prisonner will ever bereleased as the military knows their soldiers doesn't it.

I know no prisoners will be released and I dare say the insurgents know it as well. However they can always try to pull something like this in the off chance that the US might fall for it an yield, however unlikely it is, what do they have to loose in attepting such a ploy?

What do they have to lose? Everything. they look like total wankers and no one wants to support total wankers now do they?

Found a better image I think:

[SpongeBob 0]

So how long before someone here uses OFP/VBS to fake some hostage photos?

[theavonlady 2]

We've got Ossama.

Free John Adam and well give Bin Laden his clothes back. You have 24 hours.

[Necromancer- 0]

We've got Ossama.

Free John Adam and well give Bin Laden his clothes back. You have 24 hours.

What about Saddam?

[Baphomet 0]

Aim.com's news headline is now this...

Quote[/b] ]U.S.: No Soldier Missing

'Hostage' Photo Is Reportedly of a Toy

"And boy do we look stupid..."

[Scrub 0]

ROFLAO.. Avon, you're awesome! (strange how quickly you had those pics ready, though )

[miles teg 1]

well my final thoughts were is before your post. read

read all my posts since then.

You will see my views fully.

Extreme action required to Preven Extereme terrorist action.

"to summarise, i still believe a bullet is the answer to a terrorist and extreme action is needed (not the elsavador option for like the third time now) to PREVENT EXTREME TERRORIST ATTACKS to occur (dirty bombs/bio weapons)."

with miles teg "new approach" can be tried with both lethal force. killing terrorists and collaborators while taking over media.

and who also knows  if a terrorist is willing to sacrifice his family? he might not and he might. you'll never know. look at saddam, he surrendered yet everyone was saying he'll fight to the death. no one ever knows.

i've changed my view on that as well but when it comes to extreme threat such as nukes being acquired by terrorists i wouldn't rule out any action.

Ruff..you missed the whole point of my posts. It is not a simple Psy Ops operation. It is an entire shift in the paradigm of how we deal with terrorists. Certainly force should be used when we have clear targets, but we very rarely do. Almost always we end up using heavy firepower (usually bombs) that kill large numbers of civilians...and more often then not entirely miss the target/s due to bad ground intelligence.

That is our main problem in terms of our combat capability...poor intelligence. We can have all the firepower in the world, but without good intelligence, we end up just killing a bunch of civilians most of the time.

Only if we are extremely lucky in locating a terrorist hideout, camp, or HQ, do we ever score successes. Furthermore, these terrorist leaders are often worth MUCH more alive then dead as they can provide critical information for locating other terrorist cells.

But overall bullets don't prevent unknown cells and groups from developing WMD's and launching a devestating attack inside the US. Even the known groups are extremely difficult to track and destroy. If violence was the simple solution to terrorism, then Iraq would have been pacified by now and Israel would be the safest country in the world.

If you still think that violence is the best solution, please explain to me how it works. Please try explaining in a logical step by step fashion because I just can't see how it can work without committing genocide.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[bn880 5]

Great post.

[Akira 0]

Someone finally said a bit more clearly what I was trying to get across. In an ideal world where everything was so easy, ruff might have something. Unforturnately we don't live in anything near that world....

Oh and if anyone cares. The nightly news barely mentioned the hostage fiasco, glossing over it and not even showing the picture...

[bn880 5]

Right, I would probably avoid that story as well. The image(the people who made it) is using the media as a tool, to be honest. Nothing more.

[theavonlady 2]

We've got Ossama.

http://copywrong.org/blog/images/saddam-osama-doll.jpg

Free John Adam and well give Bin Laden his clothes back. You have 24 hours.

What about Saddam?  

As you can see, he's working for us now (again).

[Balschoiw 0]

What a lame show:

CIA changes tune on WMD´s

Quote[/b] ]CIA changes tune on Iraq WMD

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA is publishing a series of classified reports revising its pre-war intelligence

assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, an intelligence official says.

A January 18 report, titled "Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s," concludes that

Saddam Hussein abandoned major chemical weapons programs after the first Gulf War in 1991.

A January 4 CIA report addressed Baghdad's Scud missile and delivery system, while forthcoming reports are

expected to revise pre-war estimates of Iraq's biological and nuclear capabilities.

The intelligence official, who asked not to be named, said the latest report was not considered a high-level

document for review by U.S. President George W. Bush.

"This matches up what the assessment was before the war and what the assessment is after the war," the official

said. "It takes into account post-war information that was, by definition, not available earlier."

U.S. intelligence claims that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was

attempting to acquire nuclear capability formed a main justification for the 2003 invasion.

Former CIA Director George Tenet, who resigned last July, told Bush that finding WMD in Iraq would be a "slam

dunk" according to journalist Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack."

But no WMD have been found in Iraq and U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer is expected this month to issue

a final addendum to his September report concluding that pre-war Iraq had no such stockpiles.

"The CIA has finally admitted that its WMD estimates were wrong," Rep. Jane Harman of California, ranking

Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement.

She also called on CIA officials to conduct a vigorous review of intelligence on Iran and North Korea, "where active

WMD programs are known to exist."

Bush has branded pre-war Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil."

The United States contends that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies the charge. But Vice President Dick Cheney, a main proponent of the Iraq war, stirred concern

about possible military action against Iran recently by saying the country tops the administration list of world trouble

spots.

Reuters

Remember, they started a war on this and killed over 100.000 people for WMD´s that were never there.

Go ahead TBA. Go ahead...

[theavonlady 2]

Remember, they started a war on this and killed over 100.000 people

Repeating the figure over and over again doesn't make it true.

Quote[/b] ]Overthrow of Saddam Already Saving Lives in Iraq

Special from Hawaii Free Press

By Andrew Walden, 1/24/2005 9:58:04 AM

Opponents of Iraqi liberation make the count of civilians killed in Iraq a central theme of their arguments. They blame every death on U.S. action. At demonstrations they wave photos of Iraqis injured or killed in the fighting. But they ignore the lives that are not being lost in Iraq because Saddam's regime is no longer around to kill them.

This omission is a form of childish magical thinking that supposes the evils of Saddam's dictatorship would simply go away on their own and therefore need not be accounted for when considering the effect of the war. Rather than costing lives, the liberation of Iraq has already saved thousands of lives. Saddam's regime, on average, killed far more Iraqis -- in the same amount of time-- than even the largest realistic estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties from anti-war sources.

The most prominent recent effort to estimate Iraqi deaths after liberation came in a survey published just days before the November election by the Lancet, a medical journal. The authors, three American academics and two Iraqi professors of medicine claim 100,000 "excess deaths". But their methods do not stand up to examination.

The survey is based on interviews of geographically selected Iraqis by two live interview teams one led by Riyadh Lafti and the other by Jamal Khudhairi both of Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. To trust the results one must not only trust the objectivity of these two individuals and the unidentified Iraqi members of their teams, but also trust the responses of Iraqi interviewees who may feel that "wrong‚" answers would bring down punishment on them and their family from the al-Qaeda/Baathist insurgents. The three American academics did not directly participate in the interviews and therefore cannot lend their reputation to the point in the study where the rubber meets the road.

If that creates doubt, the other, unpublicized, conclusion of the survey seals its fate. When the interviewers were asked about deaths since March, 2003, they were also asked about violent deaths in the last fifteen months of Saddam's rule. Out of the 988 households containing 7868 residents, interviewers found only one report of a violent death in these fifteen months. Extrapolated into Iraq's population of 25 million, the conclusion would be that Saddam's regime -- plus violent crime -- cost only 3175 Iraqi lives in that 15 month period or 2540 in a year.

If we presume Iraq to have a homicide rate similar to that of the United States which had 5.6 deaths per 100,000 in the year 2002 and extrapolate that number to Iraq's population, that results in a count of 1400 normal‚ criminal homicides in Iraq in a year. This leaves 1140 excess homicides‚ in a year under Saddam. If that is multiplied by Saddam's 24 year dictatorship, the result is only 27,360 deaths at the hands of Saddam's regime. Since it is well established that Saddam's regime filled mass graves with 300,000 bodies and estimates range as high as 1 million Iraqis killed -- it is clear that the survey contains a bias toward low estimates of mortality under the dictatorship. From this it is reasonable to dismiss the claim of 100,000 "excess deaths‚" since March, 2003 as entirely unreliable.

The next anti-war source of information on Iraqi deaths is Iraqbodycount.net (IBC), which keeps a running count of what it calls Iraqi civilian casualties. In the first 16 months -- March 21, 2003 through July 21, 2004 -- IBC says between 11600 and 13574 died. But no effort is made to distinguish those killed by US action from those killed by the Iraqi army, or by the various Baathist, al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, or Mehdi Army groups. There is no separate accounting of Iraqi military dead, nor terrorist dead. In fact the individual entries in the IBC database show that many military dead are included in the civilian‚ count. IBC's "civilian" dead include targets such as, "Iraqi soldiers (and) military truck" or "enemy tanks and tracked vehicles, (and) Republican Guards." Since terrorist tactics involve civilian disguise and taking cover in civilian populations, many more of the "civilian" casualties could easily be military. All these flaws in IBC's methodology artificially drive its count higher--but still not as high as Saddam‚s averaged death toll.

There are 260 Saddam-era mass graves in Iraq, containing the bodies of at least 300,000 people. Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3253783.stm

Before Iraqis dug them up -- often bare handed -- these graves contained the bodies of mostly Shia and Kurdish opponents of Saddam. If you average the death toll out over the 24 years‚ of Saddam's rule, from 1979 to 2003, the result is 16667 murders per any 16 month period.

Using Iraqbodycount's high figure of 13,574 civilian dead killed by all sides in Iraq, the toll is 3093 fewer than the number killed by Saddam's regime in a comparable period of time. Using the low figure of 11600 killed, 5067 fewer have been killed. Based on the war protesters own numbers, 3000 to 5000 more Iraqis are alive today because of the overthrow of Saddam. Iraq may appear more chaotic than it did under Saddam -- but Saddam's smoothly operating, non-chaotic killing machines, beyond the view of the media, were more deadly than the fighting we have seen -- even using the highest figures coming from an anti-war source.

The 300,000 mass graves include only Iraqi civilian dead. Saddam attacked Iran in an effort to prevent the spread of the Islamic revolution to Iraq and then later attacked Kuwait in a naked grab for oil and territory. According to the Encyclopaedia of the Orient, in the Iran-Iraq war, 400,000 Iraqi soldiers are estimated killed. In the Kuwait war estimates run from 60,000 to 100,000. Those numbers average out to about 27,000 per 16 months under Saddam.

Since IBC includes both Iraqi military and civilian dead in its totals, as well as dead terrorists, it is fair to include Iraqi military dead from Iran and Kuwait in a count of Saddam's victims and compare the totals. Including Iraqi military dead, between 30,000 and 32,000 Iraqis have been saved by the overthrow of Saddam's dictatorship -- in just the first 16 months. And this makes no account for the thousands of Iraqis who will not be killed, and the millions whose health and life will improve, in each successive year without Saddam.

It should be noted that IBC also rejects the Lancet's methodology, saying, "the (Lancet) researchers did not ask relatives whether the male deaths were military or civilian the civilian proportion in the sample is unknown (despite the Lancet website‚s front-page headline "100,000 excess civilian deaths after Iraq invasion"), the authors clearly state that "many" of the dead in their sample may have been combatants [P.7].

The past is the best predictor of the future. To presume that Saddam would suddenly stop killing his domestic opponents and stop invading neighboring countries is to foolishly place trust in a murderous dictator. If 2002 was a slow year for Saddam's murder machine that does not lead to a conclusion that 2003 would also be a slow year. The fact Saddam's regime did much of its killing after the First Gulf War left him in power shows the fallacy of an immediate or phased withdrawal of US forces from Iraq without stabilizing the new Iraqi government. It shows that leniency inspires evil to new outrages. Premature withdrawal would be a recipe for a new Baathist or al-Qaeda bloodbath as their remnants rise from spider holes and try to reestablish dominance over the Iraqi people. Anti-war campaigners shout, "let the Iraqi people live." Their true slogan should be, "let the Iraqi people die."

Reach Andrew Walden, editor and founder of Hawaii Free Press, via email at mailto:andrewwalden@email.com

Quote[/b] ]Go ahead TBA. Go ahead...

..... and show Clinton appointee Tennet the door.

Oh. Bush did.

[kerosene 0]

I think WMD's are already in the past for Bush, his cabinet and most of his hardcore supporters - Bushmen, if you will.

Its all about the election now, they'll just keep going the way they already are, this war was started for whatever reason is most convienent at the time of asking.

And if it should all go wrong, it'll probably be other countries and pussy liberals to blame for not giving enough support to the war.

I dont know how the news in the U.S approaches it, but Britain already had its big intelligence scandal over this, and its such a joke listening to the TV news asking how this "mistake" could have occured. Who honestly belives the estimates of Saddams WMD capabilities were wrong at this point? They werent wrong, they were a work of fiction.

[theavonlady 2]

CIA changes tune on WMD´s

What is new in this article? How does it differ than the CIA's Charles Duelfer WMD report, released last September?

[billybob2002 0]

First Medal of Honor...

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/02/02/Tampabay/Iraq_hero_joins_hallo.shtml

Quote[/b] ]

Iraq hero joins hallowed group

President Bush will present America's top award for bravery to the family of the sergeant who died defending his soldiers.

By ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer

Published February 2, 2005

Sgt. Paul Smith (right) is the first soldier from the Iraq war to get the medal, which hadn't been awarded since 1993.

Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who spent his boyhood in Tampa, became a man in the Army and died outside Baghdad defending his outnumbered soldiers from an Iraqi attack, will receive America's highest award for bravery.

President Bush will present the Medal of Honor to Smith's wife, Birgit, and their children Jessica, 18, and David, 10, at a ceremony at the White House, possibly in March.

The official announcement will come soon, but the Pentagon called Mrs. Smith with the news Tuesday afternoon.

"We had faith he was going to get it," Mrs. Smith said from her home in Holiday, "but the phone call was shocking. It was overwhelming. My heart was racing, and I got sweaty hands. I yelled, "Oh, yes!' ... I'm still all shaky.

"People know what's he's done ... people know that to get a Medal of Honor you have to be a special person or do something really great."

What Paul Smith did on April 4, 2003, was climb aboard an armored vehicle and, manning a heavy machine gun, take it upon himself to cover the withdrawal of his men from a suddenly vulnerable position. Smith was fatally wounded by Iraqi fire, the only American to die in the engagement.

"I'm in bittersweet tears," said Smith's mother, Janice Pvirre. "The medal isn't going to bring him back. ... It makes me sad that all these other soldiers have died. They are all heroes."

With the medal, Smith joins a most hallowed society.

Since the Civil War, just 3,439 men (and one woman) have received the Medal of Honor. It recognizes only the most extreme examples of bravery - those "above and beyond the call of duty."

That oft-heard phrase has a specific meaning: The medal cannot be given to those who act under orders, no matter how heroic their actions. Indeed, according to Library of Congress defense expert David F. Burrelli, it must be "the type of deed which, if he had not done it, would not subject him to any justified criticism."

From World War II on, most of the men who received the medal died in the action that led to their nomination. There are but 129 living recipients.

Smith is the first soldier from the Iraq war to receive the medal, which had not previously been awarded since 1993. In that year, two Army Special Services sergeants were killed in Somalia in an action described in the bestselling book Black Hawk Down.

The officer who called Birgit Smith on Tuesday nominated her husband for the medal.

Lt. Col. Thomas Smith (no relation) sent in his recommendation in May 2003, beginning a process that involved reviews at 12 levels of the military chain of command before reaching the White House. On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Smith expressed satisfaction that the wait was over, and great admiration for his former subordinate.

In the Army, he said, you hear about men who won the Medal of Honor. "You think they are myths when you read about them. It's almost movielike. You just don't think you'd ever meet someone like that."

Paul Smith, he said, was not a "soft soldier" who suddenly got tough under fire. "This was a guy whose whole life experience seemed building toward putting him in the position where he could do something like this. He was demanding on his soldiers all the time and was a stickler for all the things we try to enforce. It's just an amazing story."

Lt. Col. Smith commanded the 11th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, during the American attack on Iraq, which began March 20, 2003. On the morning of April 4, the engineers found themselves manning a roadblock not far from Baghdad International Airport.

A call went out for a place to put some Iraqi prisoners.

Sgt. Smith volunteered to create a holding pen inside a walled courtyard. Soon, Iraqi soldiers, numbering perhaps 100, opened fire on Smith's position. Smith was accompanied by 16 men.

Smith called for a Bradley, a tank-like vehicle with a rapid fire cannon. It arrived and opened up on the Iraqis. The enemy could not advance so long as the Bradley was in position. But then, in a move that baffled and angered Smith's men, the Bradley left.

Smith's men, some of whom were wounded, were suddenly vulnerable.

Smith could have justifiably ordered his men to withdraw. Lt. Col. Smith believes Sgt. Smith rejected that option, thinking that abandoning the courtyard would jeopardize about 100 GIs outside - including medics at an aid station.

Sgt. Smith manned a 50-caliber machine gun atop an abandoned armored personnel carrier and fought off the Iraqis, going through several boxes of ammunition fed to him by 21-year-old Pvt. Michael Seaman. As the battle wound down, Smith was hit in the head. He died before he could be evacuated from the scene. He was 33.

Sgt. Matthew Keller was one of the men who fought with Smith in the courtyard. "He put himself in front of his soldiers that day and we survived because of his actions," Keller said Tuesday from Fort Stewart in Georgia. "He was thinking my men are in trouble and I'm going to do what is necessary to help them. He didn't care about his own safety."

Some of the men who fought alongside Smith were sent back to Iraq last month. Keller, 26, is scheduled to return Feb. 15, but was scrambling Tuesday to delay his deployment to attend the medal ceremony in Washington.

"I want to be there to support the family and show thanks for what Sgt. Smith did," Keller said.

Mrs. Smith moved to Holiday after her husband's death, to be near his parents. Her daughter, Jessica, recently moved out on her own and is thinking about going to college. Son David is a fifth-grader at Sunray Elementary School in Holiday.

"From the beginning (David) didn't show much feelings, keeping to himself," Mrs. Smith said. "He thinks if he brings it up it will make me sad. He's trying to be the strong one. The day Paul left for Iraq he told David, "You're the man in the house now.'

"Paul is not forgotten," she said. "He's part of history now. It makes me feel proud, so honored that I was allowed to be part of Paul's life. Even today he's probably laughing at all of us, saying "You're making way too big a deal out of me.'

"He did what he had to do to protect his men, not to get a medal."

[theavonlady 2]

Sgt. Paul Smith (right)

Either there's a pic missing or the press is editorializing too much.