Fucking up in Iraq

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Alan
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Post by Alan »

Yeah, and I was all celebrating about Ashcroft leaving. Now Bush will just make Ashcroft his Secretary of State. Or someone just as radically conservative.
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skanks
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Post by skanks »

did anybody else catch that headline "US claims insurgency is broken" in last Friday's USAToday? It was a frontpage headline, but they put in a small box which I suspect is in direct anticipation of continued attacks.

skanks
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Post by skanks »

so it looks like the insurgency is going to prevent elections in 4 of Iraq's provinces which will disenfranchise over half of Iraq's population. The government will lack any legitimacy where it needs it the most: the densely populated areas with significant unrest. Unless the new leader of Iraq is hella charasmatic I'm thinking the most likely outcome is civil war. I don't think our leadership is equipped to deal with the insurgency. We spent way too much time dressing Iraqi prisoners in panties and not nearly enough getting shit to run smooth in the country. Now everybody thinks we're a bunch of incompetent motherfuckers who deserve the shitty leadership we voted for. The arabs. The europeans. The chinese. And last but not least, the iraqis.

Fuck it man. Let's just get the fuck out of iraq. We should tell them: "Hey, like it or not we're leaving after the election." and if the country goes to hell, well, whoops. Hey, a mistake is a mistake. Maybe if we did things different Iraq would be a happy democracy right now. But we didn't . So let's just try for a theocratic-leaning democracy that isn't immediately bent on destroying the USA and otherwise just get the fuck out of there. Give the whole fucking problem to the UN. Whatever. We got no plan and people are dying every day.

Peijen
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Post by Peijen »

the most likely outcome is civil war.
The civil war is already going on, we are just fighting for Shiite right now. Why lift a finger when the dumb americans are doing it for them.

skanks
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Post by skanks »

Peijen wrote:The civil war is already going on, we are just fighting for Shiite right now. Why lift a finger when the dumb americans are doing it for them.
Q: Have the Shiites stopped killing us?

Peijen
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Post by Peijen »

skanks wrote:
Peijen wrote:The civil war is already going on, we are just fighting for Shiite right now. Why lift a finger when the dumb americans are doing it for them.
Q: Have the Shiites stopped killing us?
I thought it's the Sunnis that's fighting us? What I meant is Shiite(US) is fighting against Sunni(rebel) right now. Civil war has already begun.

skanks
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Post by skanks »

Peijen wrote:
skanks wrote:
Peijen wrote:The civil war is already going on, we are just fighting for Shiite right now. Why lift a finger when the dumb americans are doing it for them.
Q: Have the Shiites stopped killing us?
I thought it's the Sunnis that's fighting us? What I meant is Shiite(US) is fighting against Sunni(rebel) right now. Civil war has already begun.
Yeah, Yeah: The Sunnis are definitely killing us. I was just under the impression that the Shiites were also killing us. But, maybe they stopped since they're going to own the country after the election and they'll want the USA Army to help stay in power?

I don't know. You'd think one might be able to get news about this kind of thing, but the newspapers only report individual incidents. They have such a hard time talking about trends.

Jason
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Post by Jason »


Peijen
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Post by Peijen »

You know, I am not sure if that's a good idea or bad idea... My instinct tells it's a bad idea, but part of me wonders "how much worse can is get?"

skanks
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White Wash

Post by skanks »

Wow. This article is truly an astounding white-wash.

"The U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers."

This article gives our funding of death squads an unprecedented triple-qualification claiming the forces we funded "allegedly" "included" "so-called" deathsquads. As if we expected right-wing paramilitaries to do anything other forcibly seize the country with an orchestrated reign of terror, massive retaliation, and indiscriminate killings.

The article makes almost no mention of how these counter-insurgency forces would operate except to say that they would do targetting killings of the insurgents and their sympathizers. What constitutes a "sympathizer"? The article doesn't say, but judging by the AP photo of the four dead (raped) nuns we can infer that the definition is pretty broad.

Let's be clear: the fundamental idea of these forces is they execute brutal attacks of the general population in order to terrorize the general population into collaborating with counter-insurgent (US) intelligence and denying insurgents safe harbor. That's what they mean when they say "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists ... we have to change that equation." They mean that if counter-insurgent forces have any reason at all to even suspect that you or anybody you know is sympathetic to insurgent forces (ie you are a Sunni) or isn't cooperating fully, then they will kill you, rape your wife/daughters/mother, kill your wife/daughters/mother, kill any other family members, kill your friends, rape any nuns who oppose the spree of raping and killing, and then kill the nuns. That's what the Salvador option was. That's what the Salvador option is.

We get to claim our hands are clean of these killings by

a) denying they happened
b) denying their scope
c) denying our involvement
d) scapegoating a couple of Kurdish lackeys if they direct any killings that recieve media attention

Jonathan
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Re: White Wash

Post by Jonathan »

skanks wrote:Let's be clear: the fundamental idea of these forces is they execute brutal attacks of the general population in order to terrorize the general population into collaborating with counter-insurgent (US) intelligence and denying insurgents safe harbor. That's what they mean when they say "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists ... we have to change that equation." They mean that if counter-insurgent forces have any reason at all to even suspect that you or anybody you know is sympathetic to insurgent forces (ie you are a Sunni) or isn't cooperating fully, then they will kill you, rape your wife/daughters/mother, kill your wife/daughters/mother, kill any other family members, kill your friends, rape any nuns who oppose the spree of raping and killing, and then kill the nuns. That's what the Salvador option was. That's what the Salvador option is.
Yes.

Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archiv ... 005556.php

Elections were held in Vietnam in 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tet_offensive

The Tet Offensive was in 1968.

skanks
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Post by skanks »

Results from the Iraq election are starting to come in:

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/04/internati ... r=homepage

and the winner is looking like ... Iran!

Preliminary results indicate that 72% of the vote went to United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Islamic groups unaffiliated with the USA. The United Iraqi Alliance is composed of many fine political parties including:
  • Islamic Master of the Martyrs Movement
    Hezbollah Movement in Iraq
    Hezbollah al-Iraq
    Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
oh that last one is my personal favorite. They've got a real Jeffersonian aura. I also like how there's more than one factions trying to cash in on the namesake of the Hezbollah, a Lebonese organization most notable for its victory over occupying forces as well as its support of international terrorism.

Ok, ideally we would just say "well, democracy is as democracy does" and then just get the hell out of there. But I suspect this adminstration is going to stick around to blunder some more. Call me an adherant to Baconian inductive reasoning, but I don't think Bush is going to leave until he completely fucks this opportunity up.

skanks
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how we got here

Post by skanks »

So, before the Iraq war went down, were you thinking that Bush was just bullshitting the whole inspection/WMD because he really just wanted to go to war with Iraq?

Obviously you were right, but now you can prove it in no uncertain terms:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 07,00.html

This country is full of suckers.

Dave
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Post by Dave »

They should build the fusion reactor in the middle east then go "oops"
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skanks
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Post by skanks »

I've been trying to think of ways to profit off of the vast right-wing network of mass hallucination for a while now. Whoever thought of this site is an icon of a entrepreneurship in the Bush era:


http://betoniraq.com/

Image

Strategy: "Patriotic" appeal to deluded right-wingers who genuinely believe that "liberal media" refuses to tell the "good news" coming in from Iraq. Challange suckers to place their belief in Bush on the line by purchasing newly minted Iraqi dinars (from you). Emphasize that Iraq's currency is at a 100 year low, suggesting that Iraqi dollars will be on the rise any second now as "freedom" sets in. Produce a fantasy of the Dinar going as high as 1 cent and yielding a windfall for freedom-loving investors. Meanwhile, sell iraqi dinars at a highly overpriced rate to assure your profit upfront. Advertise on right-wing blogs and right-wing newsportals.

quantus
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Post by quantus »

hrmmm... They're suggesting that I could turn $80 worth of Dinars into $15,000 if the exchange rate were to return to the pre-war rate... Why would I not just sink $500 into this on the off chance it's right? I'd actually be able to make a down payment on a house if it panned out. Of course, someone needs to first tell me why the dinar would suddenly shoot back up.
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Jason
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Post by Jason »

I probably wouldn't mind buying one of every dinar denomination just to have them.

skanks
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Post by skanks »

Iran's influence on the new Iraqi State

A summary at Salon about the Iran's new vice-president visiting the Shiite dominated Iraqi government. The articles suggests unprecedented cooperation between the nations including extradition treaties, trade treaties, foreign aid, military cooperation, and binational oil pipelines. The article suggests Iran would like to assist Iraq in defeating the Sunni insurgency.

On the hand, Iran could be a powerful ally in stabilizing Iraq. On the other hand, the point of the Iraq war wasn't to have a stable Iraq (which we had under Saddam), but a loyal Iraq which we won't have if Iraq continues on the path towards Islamic theocracy.

quantus
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Post by quantus »

Isn't this why we started a thread titled 'Fucking up in Iran'? Iran's going to 'stabilize' Iraq, but in a way we don't like, so we'll go invade Iran to get them in line which will bring Iraq along too... In the process we'll vigorously defend any improvements to oil distribution that the two countries have made.
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