Iraq on the Record

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da fabio69
risulta, risulta ed è pure risaputo
e toglie, oh se toglie

[GioFX]

fabio, hanno una visione caricaturale anche le commissioni come quella sull'11 settembre? o forse le commissioni del congresso che pubblicano dossier come quelli sulla difesa e l'antiterrorismo, o sull'Iraq?

[fabio69]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
fabio, hanno una visione caricaturale anche le commissioni come quella sull'11 settembre? o forse le commissioni del congresso che pubblicano dossier come quelli sulla difesa e l'antiterrorismo, o sull'Iraq?

no, sono io che ho una visione caricaturale delle ricostruzioni forumistiche che girano su internet in proposito

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da fabio69
no, sono io che ho una visione caricaturale delle ricostruzioni forumistiche che girano su internet in proposito

ricostruzioni? mah!

[GioFX]

aspetto ancora qualcuno che mi spieghi il perchè di tante falsità:

- Iraq come pericolo immediato per la sicurezza degli Stati Uniti, dei suoi "alleati" e dei suoi interessi (GWB)

- Iraq in possesso di precise armi di distruzione di massa, chimiche e batteriologiche e armi convenzionali in grado di colpire un altro paese in 45 minuti (Powell, UN)

- Iraq in possesso di agenti chimici e batteriologici come antrace (Powell, UN)

- Iraq in possesso di uranio arricchito aquistato dal Niger (Powell, UN)

e poi dovete spiegarmi perchè (fonti: NYT, Reuters, ecc.):

- La "costituzione" irachena è carta straccia, dato che qualsiasi legge può essere bloccata da una qualsiasi delle parti che costituiscono il Governo Provvisorio Iracheno

- L'amministrazione provvisoria americana deterrà per un tempo indeterminato il controllo di tutta la sicurezza nel paese

- Gli Stati Uniti d'America potranno installare fino a 14 basi militari permanenti nel paese

- Gli Stati Uniti d'America hanno il 94% delle commesse per la ricostruzione e per l'installazione di piattaforme e condutture petrolifere, centrali elettriche e impianti di distribuzione, e altro

- L'amministrazione Bremer e gli alleati occupanti non controllano e non hanno intenzione di controllare le frontiere irachene

Grazie

[GioFX]

Da prendere con le pinze, dato che non si può conoscere la credibilità della fonte, ad ogni modo, per dovere di cronaca... :

New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq
Friday, 16 April 2004
Article: Mehr News Agency

Tuesday 12 April 2004

BASRA - Fifty days after the first reports that the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of these weapons have been disclosed.

Given the recent scandals to the effect that the U.S. president was privy to the 9/11 plot, they might try to immediately announce the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to overshadow the scandals and prevent a further decline of Bush's public opinion rating as the election approaches.

Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0404/S00164.htm

[GioFX]

Da CNN.com:

Eleven more U.S. troops die in Iraq

Eleven more U.S. troops die in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. troop deaths in Iraq reached 700, with 504 killed in combat, as the military on Sunday added 11 American casualties to the war's mounting death toll.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, meanwhile, on Sunday said he will withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq "in the shortest time possible."

Zapatero, who was sworn into office Saturday, had previously vowed to bring home Spain's 1,300 troops if the United Nations did not have "political and military control" in Iraq by June 30.

The U.S. casualties announced Sunday included five Marines who were killed in fierce fighting near Iraq's border with Syria.

The Marines were killed Saturday when a patrol reported coming under attack by insurgents with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades near the town of Husaybah, the Marines said.

Reinforcements, backed by helicopter support, also came under fire by insurgents operating from near Husaybah's former Ba'ath Party headquarters, the military said.

The fight continued through the night, the Marines said, pitting their troops against 120 to 150 insurgents. The Marines estimated 25 to 30 insurgents were killed in the attack.

They also reported seeing women and children surrounding mortar positions, but could not tell if they were there voluntarily, and said the insurgents fired at medical helicopters carrying wounded Marines from the battlefield.

Elsewhere, three U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday when their 1st Armored Division convoy was ambushed near the southern Iraqi town of Ad Diwaniyah.

A ninth American, who was assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit, was killed Saturday in fighting west of Baghdad in the violent Al Anbar province.

Also on Sunday, officials announced two more deaths. A U.S. soldier was killed and two others injured Saturday when their tank rolled over in north Baghdad, and another soldier died of wounds received in a roadside bombing Saturday.

Najaf, Fallujah relatively calm
Two Iraqi cities that have been centers of fighting between insurgents and U.S.-led coalition troops -- Najaf and Fallujah -- were relatively calm Sunday.

No talks were scheduled about the situation in Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad where fierce fighting dominated the first two weeks of April.

Outside the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf in south-central Iraq, coalition forces remained deployed while militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army retained control of the town.

Minor clashes were reported elsewhere in southern Iraq between al-Sadr supporters and other coalition forces.

The coalition wants to capture or kill al-Sadr, wanted for questioning in the killing of a rival cleric. Coalition troops also would like to render his outlawed militia, which has been fighting U.S. soldiers, harmless. There are several parties, including Iranians, trying to negotiate with al-Sadr.

Also Sunday, Pope John Paul II called on Iraqi kidnappers to show "humanity" and free their hostages, including U.S. Army Pfc. Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, a reservist from Batavia, Ohio.

In his weekly appearance in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday, the pontiff said he was "following with great sadness the tragic news that is coming out of the Holy Land and Iraq." (Full story)

New Iraqi military leaders chosen
Amid concerns that Iraq's security forces were inadequate to the task of securing the country, defense minister Ali Allawi announced newly appointed military leaders in his ministry and said the new Iraqi military would eventually number 200,000.

"Iraqi forces will be defensive in nature, composed of volunteers only," Allawi said in Baghdad. "The military will serve their people without religious or sectarian or tribal or political discrimination."

Allawi also said he was confident Iraqi forces would be able to handle "the enemies of Iraq [who] are carrying out aggressive acts to get Iraq back to the old days."

Additionally, the coalition announced that the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps had captured a suspected anticoalition leader near the northern city of Tikrit early Sunday.

Hakeem Badour Khalaf, the coalition said, has been implicated in the deaths or injuries of at least three people, including two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter.

In Baghdad, the Advisory City Council helped in the selection of a mayor Sunday. The council heard from the final eight mayoral candidates who were chosen from more than 90 applicants.

The Coalition Provision Authority has the final say in the matter after the council provides a list of the three candidates with the most votes. Coalition officials said they expected to confirm the council's choice.

[GioFX]

[GioFX]

Da Independent.co.uk:

US admits it will still control Iraq after transfer

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

24 April 2004

The US has made clear that the transfer of sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government on 30 June will be a limited affair, and that ultimate authority will reside at a gigantic new US embassy in Baghdad and with the military occupation force.

In sometimes heated hearings on Capitol Hill this week, senior Bush administration officials admitted they did not know who would be in the new government, precisely what powers it would exercise, nor the exact shape of the new Security Council resolution that Washington is seeking at the United Nations.

Marc Grossman, Under-Secretary of State for political affairs, said the government would put "a very important Iraqi face" on many aspects of the country's life. But the US military, not the Iraqi security forces, would be in charge of all security matters.

Asked what would happen if the temporary government acted at variance with US foreign policy - such as by seeking closer ties with Iran - Mr Grossman implied that would not be tolerated. "That is why we want to have an American ambassador in Iraq," he noted cryptically.

The limitations can only complicate US efforts to win a fresh resolution at the UN, whose special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been finalising the new government. Its main task will be to prepare for elections next year, but some Security Council members may now balk at conferring UN legitimacyon a new Iraqi government whose powers are so limited.

The admissions by Mr Grossman come as pressure is intensifying on the Pentagon to bolster the US occupying force, and amid evidence that the costs of the occupation are rising even faster than the administration predicted. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that military costs this year would run $4.7bn (£2.7bn) ahead of estimates.

In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Senator John McCain of Arizona, President Bush's unsuccessful rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, demanded the Pentagon send a division, roughly 15,000 men, to Iraq to reinforce the 135,000 US contingent there.

The President had to make clear the size of the commitment needed to prevail in Iraq, said Mr McCain, a strong supporter of the March 2003 invasion. "He needs to be perfectly frank: bringing peace and democracy to Iraq is an enormous endeavour that will be very expensive, difficult and long."

But more troops, coupled with what from 1 July will be the largest US embassy worldwide, with some 3,000 staff, will only underline how Washington will stay in charge, whatever nominal sovereignty is handed over to Iraqis. Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said: "On 1 July, Iraqis will wake up and there's going to be 160,000 troops and a US ambassador pulling the strings. How does that take the American face off the occupation?"

*Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, yesterday said he could unleash suicide bombers if US forces attacked the holy Shia city of Najaf, and called on the nation to unite to expel Iraq's occupiers. US troops are poised just outside Najaf and have vowed to kill or capture Sadr and destroy his Army of Mehdi militia, which has clashed with foreign forces across southern and central Iraq.

[GioFX]

Outside View: Iraq 2004, Vietnam 1964

By Ted Galen Carpenter
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Washington, DC, Apr. 23 (UPI) -- As U.S. forces in Iraq reel from a rapidly expanding insurgency, Americans are beginning to ask whether we have stumbled into a Vietnam-style quagmire. It is appropriate to hesitate before making that comparison. Critics of U.S. military interventions have been too quick to invoke the Vietnam analogy in the past. We heard similar warnings about "another Vietnam" during the interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In all of those cases, the warnings were -- at the very least -- overblown.

But this time the critics appear to be right. The breadth of the insurgency, the difficulty the United States is encountering in pacifying the country, the inability to tell friend from foe, and the weakness and unreliability of pro-American indigenous factions are eerily reminiscent of Vietnam. America seems to be in a fight that it cannot win -- at least cannot win at any reasonable level of cost in terms of blood and treasure.

U.S. leaders now face a choice similar to the one Lyndon Johnson's administration confronted in 1964 and early 1965. At that time, it was becoming evident that a limited U.S. military commitment was insufficient to defeat the communist forces in South Vietnam. Administration leaders faced a stark choice: Withdraw American forces, even though Washington's credibility throughout the world might be damaged, or escalate by sending in more troops. The Johnson administration ignored the advice of realist foreign policy experts such as Hans Morgenthau and Walter Lippmann and chose to escalate. It thereby transformed a foreign policy setback into a debacle.

The choice in Iraq is much the same. Voices advocating escalation can be heard already, including Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. In a narrow sense, their analysis is correct: the United States does not currently have enough troops in Iraq to control the deteriorating situation.

But escalation would be as unwise and futile as it was in Vietnam. A growing number of Iraqis -- even those who originally were happy to see Saddam Hussein ousted -- now view the United States as an alien, occupying power. The willingness of Shiites and Sunnis to bury their long-standing rivalry and cooperate in the latest insurgent attacks is an especially ominous sign. Even worse, the occupation of Iraq has become a provocation to much of the Muslim world. We have overstayed our welcome in Iraq. Sending in more troops may dampen the current round of fighting, but it will not overcome those problems.

Admittedly, a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is not without its drawbacks. America's credibility will take a hit, and radical Islamist forces will interpret the result as a victory for their side. Post-occupation Iraq could be a very ugly place, with a full-blown civil war a possibility. Those are all factors that advocates of the Iraq war should have considered before embarking on that mission. Opponents of the war warned that a U.S. intervention would create more instability, not less, in Iraq and throughout the region. Unfortunately, those warnings went unheeded, and we now face a choice of decidedly less than perfect options.

Advocates of staying the course blithely argue that we cannot "cut and run." But a principle from the world of investing applies to wise and prudent foreign policy. Smart investors know that it is better to cut losses early rather than stubbornly hold on to an investment that has gone sour -- much less pour more resources into such an investment. Those who defy that logic end up like the Enron and Worldcom investors who rode those stocks all the way to the bottom.

The U.S. mission in Iraq is an investment that clearly has gone sour. We should cut our losses now, while they are relatively modest. If we don't, we will likely be compelled to terminate the mission later under even less favorable circumstances. Moreover, by then we will have wasted tens of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in a futile venture. A smart superpower should not make such a blunder.

(Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. He is also the author or editor of 15 books on international affairs.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

Da http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breakin...0019-1348r.htm

[GioFX]

Beh, se le cose vanno come credo...

Vietnam 1975, Iraq 2015

[GioFX]

Londra - 18/05/2004 (11:23)

Iraq, Straw: forse 10.000 le vittime irachene

Il ministro degli Esteri britannico Jack Straw ha ammesso che non si riesce a tenere il conto delle vittime irachene e che secondo una stima di massima, dall'inizio del conflitto dovrebbero essere intorno alle 10.000. "In un mondo perfetto" ha detto Straw ai microfoni della Bbc ciò non dovrebbe accadere, ma evidentemente non è possibile.

Ieri il quotidiano The Independent aveva dedicato tutta la sua prima pagina a questo argomento titolando: "777 americani e 67 britannici sono stati uccisi dall'inizio della guerra. Perchè non si contano i morti iracheni?".

[GioFX]

Ancora le parole famose di Rumsfeld...

Da http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2...00302081.html:

He said Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, and other nations, gladdened him with recent statements of support "expressing their determination that Iraq disarm itself of its weapons of mass destruction.

He said such declarations demonstrate that the world is increasingly united in seeing Iraq jettison its WMDs and the means to deliver them.

Saddam Hussein wouldn't hesitate to use his deadly arsenal in the future, Rumsfeld pointed out in Rome. And, he noted, such weaponry could well fall into the hands of terrorists.

[von Clausewitz]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Beh, se le cose vanno come credo...

Vietnam 1975, Iraq 2015

ROTFL
che fregnaccia, Gio

[von Clausewitz]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Londra - 18/05/2004 (11:23)

Iraq, Straw: forse 10.000 le vittime irachene

Il ministro degli Esteri britannico Jack Straw ha ammesso che non si riesce a tenere il conto delle vittime irachene e che secondo una stima di massima, dall'inizio del conflitto dovrebbero essere intorno alle 10.000. "In un mondo perfetto" ha detto Straw ai microfoni della Bbc ciò non dovrebbe accadere, ma evidentemente non è possibile.

Ieri il quotidiano The Independent aveva dedicato tutta la sua prima pagina a questo argomento titolando: "777 americani e 67 britannici sono stati uccisi dall'inizio della guerra. Perchè non si contano i morti iracheni?".

e io che ti avevo detto qualche settimana fa?
The Independent è un quotidiano spocchioso che fa moralismo un tanto al chilo
e robert fisk, dalla guerra in kosovo a quella in afghanistan, su cui mi ha edotto il caro cerbert (su fisk intendo), ha scritto esclusivamente fregnaccie

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
e io che ti avevo detto qualche settimana fa?
The Independent è un quotidiano spocchioso che fa moralismo un tanto al chilo
e robert fisk, dalla guerra in kosovo a quella in afghanistan, su cui mi ha edotto il caro cerbert (su fisk intendo), ha scritto esclusivamente fregnaccie

che mi avevi detto tu?

[von Clausewitz]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
che mi avevi detto tu?

che i morti iracheni si potevano far ascendere a circa 10.000
do you remember?

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
che i morti iracheni si potevano far ascendere a circa 10.000
do you remember?

non eri tu, era fabio...

e cmq non vedo la differenza... cos'è tutto questo puntualizzare? per te sono pochi 10k morti?!?

[von Clausewitz]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
non eri tu, era fabio...

ah già, è vero :eheh:

e cmq non vedo la differenza... cos'è tutto questo puntualizzare? per te sono pochi 10k morti?!?

con te è una coazione a ripetere, 10.000 morti, sono tanti, troppi, ma con 15.000 c'è una differenza del 50%
e come se dicessi che milosevic in giro per i balcani non ha fatto 200.000 morti, bensì 300.000 e forse avrei fatto bene a dirlo, con l'andazzo di questo forum di dare numeri a caso

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
ah già, è vero :eheh:

l'hanno bannato?

con te è una coazione a ripetere, 10.000 morti, sono tanti, troppi, ma con 15.000 c'è una differenza del 50%
e come se dicessi che milosevic in giro per i balcani non ha fatto 200.000 morti, bensì 300.000 e forse avrei fatto bene a dirlo, con l'andazzo di questo forum di dare numeri a caso

ma te da dove li prendi i numeri, sapientone?

e poi, perchè Straw dovrebbe essere più affidabile? Anzi, non avrebbe tutto l'interesse presentare numeri inferiori?