http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?151100

Bush administration deploys thousands more troops in Baghdad

Monday July 31, 2006 (1543 PST)


In what was a tacit admission that previous efforts to consolidate its occupation of Iraq had failed, the Bush administration last week announced the deployment of more than 4,000 additional US soldiers in Baghdad. The latest tactical shift paves the way for a dramatic intensification of repression and violence against the Iraqi people and a surge in casualties among American soldiers.
President George Bush announced the decision on July 25, following a meeting in Washington with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “Our strategy is to remain on the offence, including in Baghdad,” he declared. “Coalition and Iraqi forces will secure individual neighbourhoods, will ensure the existence of an Iraqi security presence in the neighbourhoods, and gradually expand the security presence as Iraqi citizens help them root out those who instigate violence.”

Bush’s announcement was issued with his administration’s usual combination of cynicism and blatant dishonesty. An increased US military presence in Iraq’s capital was presented as a means of assisting the Iraqi people and defending the “democratic” national government.

In reality, however, the additional US forces are being sent to Baghdad to suppress the resistance of ordinary Iraqis to the foreign occupation and to prop up the US-installed puppet regime headed by Maliki, as sectarian violence escalates.

Washington’s decision to send an additional 4,000 troops into the capital itself demonstrates the weakness of the Iraqi government, which is widely despised as an instrument of the occupying powers and which would immediately collapse if the American-led troops were withdrawn. The additional forces will join the 9,000 American soldiers and 8,500 Iraqi troops already stationed in Baghdad.

After Maliki was installed as prime minister in April, he announced a new strategy for dealing with resistance activity and sectarian fighting. “Operation Forward Together” saw a series of repressive measures enforced by US troops and their Iraqi proxies in the army and police. Roadblocks were erected throughout Baghdad, slowing traffic to a crawl, while checkpoints encircled the city in an effort to cut off insurgents from neighbouring bases of support. Night curfews were also enforced and vehicle movements restricted.

The crackdown was hailed by the Bush administration as a welcome development following the installation of a so-called national unity government headed by Maliki. Washington cobbled together a highly unstable alliance of Kurdish nationalists, Shiite sectarian parties, and a number of Sunni organisations and promoted it as yet another “turning point” for Iraq. The coalition government would supposedly work with the occupying forces to defuse communalist tensions and bolster the Iraqi military and police forces, allowing the Bush administration to withdraw some of its forces from the country ahead of the US mid-term elections in November.

None of this has eventuated. Instead, the Maliki government has been wrought by inner tensions, a symptom of sharpening sectarian conflict, and the crisis facing the occupying forces has intensified. American troops continued to be killed and wounded by roadside bombs and other guerrilla attacks, and the numbers of Sunni and Shiite victims of sectarian conflict continued to skyrocket. Nearly 2,600 American soldiers have now died in the war, while the number of Iraqi civilian deaths continues to escalate at the hands of both the US-led occupying forces and the sectarian militias and death squads. According to United Nations figures, about 6,000 Iraqis, or 100 a day, were killed in sectarian or political violence in May and June.

In classic colonial-style fashion, Washington’s response to the mounting crisis is to intensify repression of the local population. The additional 4,000 American troops being dispatched to Baghdad will be joined by an equivalent number of Iraqi soldiers drawn from different areas of the country. US soldiers will be deployed in the city’s police stations and alongside senior officers, in an attempt to stem sectarian rivalries within the country’s security forces.

The US and Iraqi troops are supposed to enforce a so-called “inkblot strategy” in Baghdad, whereby specific neighbourhoods and sectors in the capital are made the focus of house raids and security sweeps, and other areas are effectively abandoned to anti-occupation forces. The theory goes that once certain areas are secured, the “inkblot” of control will spread to cover the entire city and country.

While this is publicly presented as a military strategy, it is an implicit recognition that more than three years after the fall of Baghdad, US-led forces and the puppet Iraqi regime are still unable to control vast swathes of the country, including the capital.

In its attempt to secure Baghdad, the Bush administration has been forced to move troops from other areas of Iraq where its control is, to say the least, tenuous. Some of the 4,000 troops will be drawn from Anbar province, which includes the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, and is the centre of the Sunni-led resistance. Eight marines have been killed in the province in the last four days. Other forces will be redeployed from the northern city of Mosul, which has been a focus of sectarian fighting between Kurdish and Sunni forces. US troops stationed in Germany and Kuwait have also been recently sent into Iraq.

The boosting of troop numbers in Baghdad will place further strains on an already overstretched US military. The latest redeployment will boost the total number of US troops in the country from the current 127,000 to more than 130,000. As the situation continues to worsen for Washington, the Bush administration’s desire to withdraw a limited number of troops ahead of US congressional elections has been dashed.

Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic International Studies told the New York Times that any troop pullout in the next few months “would be so cosmetic that it would be meaningless. It would be statistical gamesmanship. People are talking about 2009 as the goal for achieving really serious security.”

Thousands of soldiers who were scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks have had their tours of duty extended by up to four months. Most of those forced to remain in Iraq are from the 3,500-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which is currently stationed in Mosul. The soldiers were preparing to return home when the order to remain was signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Major Kirk Gohlke, an army spokesman, later admitted that the news had provoked anger. “The families and the soldiers are human,” he declared. “They reacted the way anyone would react.”

The US military is already facing a crisis of morale in Iraq. Tens of thousands of troops have been affected by extended tours of duty and cancelled leave, others have been issued with stop-loss orders preventing them from leaving the military, and countless National Guardsmen, often poorly trained and equipped, have been deployed in Iraq for lengthy periods.

A Washington Post report last Thursday, entitled “Waiting to get blown up”, provided an insight into the increasing disillusionment and hostility towards the war within the ranks of the US military.

The newspaper interviewed soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, who patrol the streets of Baghdad. Each infantryman in the capital conducts about 10 patrols a week, for a total of between 50 to 60 hours. The 750-man battalion, which entered Iraq in March, has suffered 6 deaths and 21 injuries.

“It sucks,” Spec. Tim Ivey said. “Honestly, it just feels like we’re driving around waiting to get blown up. That’s the most honest answer I could give you. You lose a couple of friends and it gets hard.”

“No one wants to be here, you know, no one is truly enthused about what we do,” Sgt. Christopher Dugger, the squad leader, told the Washington Post. “We were excited but then it just wears on you—there’s only so much you can take. Like me, personally, I want to fight in a war like World War II. I want to fight an enemy. And this, out here, there is no enemy, it’s a faceless enemy.”

The frustration of not being able to distinguish an enemy in an environment where the majority of the people are hostile to the US forces and doubts about the war itself were repeated themes among the soldiers interviewed.

“[In] World War II the big picture was clear—you know you’re fighting because somebody was trying to take over the world, basically,” 22-year-old medic David Fulcher said. “This is like, what did we invade here for? How did it become, ‘Well now we have to rebuild this place from the ground up’?

“They say we’re here and we’ve given them freedom, but really what is that? You know, what is freedom? You’ve got kids here who can’t go to school. You’ve got people here who don’t have jobs anymore. You’ve got people here who don’t have power. You know, so yeah, they’ve got freedom now, but when they didn’t have freedom, everybody had a job.”

*****

Are they ever gonna learn? Send 20k more. It won't help.

What a mess.

You know, if there can be a silver lining to this cloud, I'd like to hope that the momentous screw-up that has been the last 6 yrs of federal gov't in this country will leave such an indelible impact that even the most attention deficient of our voting public will be given cause to never again vote for anyone for any public office who has had any part or connection to this cabal of drooling, power mad morons.

That is a really long sentence.

I guess all I can say is that if you enlist, you don't get to pick your battles. This is sounding more and more fucked all the time.

McP's 3-step pullout plan for Iraq:

#1 - Pistol-whip Captain Annan into sending in a sizable UN peacekeeping/living assistance force. Tell him that the US will help fund the force to the tune of 1/2 what we're currently spending on this fuck up. Assure Mr. Annan that we will continue to provide these funds for the next 4 years. Tell him that Iraqis will be nicer to his boys because, well, they're not American.

#2 - Design troop pull-out to coincide with arrival of UN force. Humbly thank countries who are providing assistance.

#3 - Continue to provide funds for two years and then DENY DENY DENY!

There's only a few problems with your plan -

#1 - The U.N. will not put a "peacekeeping force" in Iraq. The security council nations (America and Britian aside) were unwilling to deal with the threat that Iraq posed to the free world. NATO is currently in Afghanistan, not the U.N.

#2 - Our troops will be left standing around waiting for their new "U.N. replacement forces" eternally because the U.N. is weak and will not commit troops.

#3 - See 1 and 2.

#1 What threat did Iraq actually pose? No weapons were found. That's why no-one else wanted anything else to do with it.

#2 It's our mess (US & GB) we should have enough balls about us to clear it up. Why should the UN fix Bush's fuck-ups?

#3 See 2

Excellent point. Neither should the US & GB try to fix the UN's fuck ups.

Well, tell me MrMcParadigm. How many millions of people must die in Iraq because you didn't learn from the mistakes in Somalia?

You wanna talk about a quagmire?

you know, i wont be hipocrite. the iraquian people are being fuckin stupid. If they want a total civil, let them have it.

Yes, that's right, gang, I WAS joking. Good eye. I think it was subtle, so I am amazed that nobody was decieved. You were too smart to be fooled! I know that third point especially must have been tempting to believe...

#1 The "no WMD" is an ongoing lie perpetrated by the Liberal Mainstream Media. It has recently been revealed that over 500 chemical warheads have been recovered by coalition troops.
As far as this being the reason "no one else wanted anything to do with it"....again, a lie perpetrated by the LMSM. It wasn't just U.S. intelligence that said Iraq still possessed WMD. British, French and Russian intelligence all said the same thing - slam dunk on WMD.

#2 This is an interesting question. Let me put it in the reverse - after 17 U.N. resolutions that were not enforced, why did the U.S. and the coalition forces have to enforce the U.N.'s resolutions?
In the same way, Israel is doing the U.N.'s work. The U.N. passed a resolution two years ago that ordered Lebanon to disarm all militias (i.e. Hezbollah) in its country. Lebanon didn't do it.....Israel was attacked....and now Israel is doing the U.N.'s dirty work.
The U.N. excels at passing resolutions....it just fails to enforce them. Keep an eye on what happens with Iran and their Nuclear Weapon Program. If the U.N. backed up its resolution with action, the President of Iran wouldn't have scoffed at the resolution recently passed. I predict that next year the U.S. will be taking out Iran's nuclear sites....without the help of the U.N.

I forget if we've discussed this yet or not, but if "no WMD" is indeed an ongoing lie, then why isn't the Bush administration making more noise about these supposed WMD finds? It sure would give him more legitimacy regarding Iraq in general and specfically the reason to go in there in the first place.

because it was 500 old, rusty missiles that weren't capable of being used.

there were no wmd's found in iraq. whether or not they were shipped to other countries i do not know. but the U.S. has called off the search and both the white house and tony blair have apologized and said they're committed to finding out what went wrong.

What is it with you and the catch phrases LeninFlux? You sound like the Colbert Report or something, only entirely serious.

Do you expect people to take you seriously when you say shit like this?

I are a good riter.

"There were no WMD found in Iraq."

Are you sure about that?

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx ... c%3e%3a%24



Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass death
By DEROY MURDOCK

Monday, Jul. 17, 2006

LIKE CHANTING Buddhist monks, the President's critics repeat 100 times daily: "Bush Lied — People Died." The "lie," of course, is that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass death. "There were none," Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told colleagues June 21. "They were not there." Absent such munitions, the argument goes, U.S. involvement in Iraq is nothing but a blood-soaked misadventure unfolding on a collapsed facade of falsehoods.

Nevertheless, while the liberal press gently sleeps, evidence continues to mount that Saddam had WMDs, though perhaps not in quantities that would bulge warehouses.

"Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent," states a June 21 declassified summary of a report from the National Ground Intelligence Center. "Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Are these weapons old and inert? The Pentagon unit warns, "While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal."

"Iraq was not a WMD-free zone," said House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. "Weapons have been discovered. More weapons exist." Hoekstra and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., have pressured the administration to detail its WMD findings.

What if terrorists acquired a few of these shells? "You're not talking about transferring hundreds to make an impact in New York, in a subway, or anything like that," Hoekstra told reporters June 21. "One or two of these shells, the materials inside of these, transferred outside of the country can be very, very deadly."

Here and there, other potentially deadly things have emerged from Iraq's sands.


Former weapons inspector David Kay declared on Oct. 2, 2003, that U.S. personnel discovered "a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced." This was, Kay said, "hidden in the home" of an Iraqi biological-weapons researcher.


In January 2004, according to a New York Sun editorial published that June 1, a seven-pound block of cyanide salt popped up in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Baghdad safe house.


On May 2, 2004, U.S. forces in Iraq found a mustard-gas shell, rigged as an improvised explosive device. The Iraq Survey Group sent in by coalition forces to find WMD dismissed this as "ineffective" due to improper storage. Of course, the effectiveness of Saddam's weapons was not the issue. He was supposed to prove they had been destroyed or open his facilities for inspection. Instead, Saddam failed to account for 550 mustard-gas projectiles. This may have been among them.


"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," also reworked as an explosive device, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters that May 15. Two soldiers exposed to the device "displayed 'classic' symptoms of sarin exposure, most notably dilated pupils and nausea," FOX News reported. Officials also told the network that the shell contained three to four liters of sarin, roughly three-quarters of a gallon.


Weapons sleuth Charles Duelfer told FOX News on June 24, 2004: "We found, you know, 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds."


That July 6, the Department of Energy announced that a joint effort with the Pentagon removed 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium from Iraq "that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program," said a DOE statement. Those3,894 pounds of uranium were in "powdered form, which is easily dispersed," DOE spokesman Bryan Wilkes told Hudson Institute adjunct fellow Richard Miniter, author of "Disinformation: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror." As Miniter concludes: "The material would have been ideal for a radioactive dirty bomb."

So, Americans in Iraq have found 500 sarin- and mustard-gas-filled artillery shells, live botulinum toxin, cyanide salt and nearly two tons of uranium. Yet, no, Virginia, there were no WMDs in Iraq.

Without threatening intelligence contacts and techniques, the ever-bashful Bush administration owes it to American taxpayers and our coalition allies to unveil everything it safely can about what we really have found in Iraq. Hiding evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass death serves no one. For all the talk of "lies," the truth will set President Bush free.

I've seen "The Colbert Report," and since his show is a daily rip on Republicans and the Bush Administration, I'm sure that I will bring up something that he as (seeing how I support President Bush and the WorldWide War on Terror).
Yes, there are "catch phrases" such as "IslamoFascism" that have entered into political vocabulary. I don't know what else to call it....I think its an appropriate term, given the goals of fanatical groups.
A while back I read that something like 50% of younger people get their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Considering that these shows are both comedy shows and completely Liberal in their views, I think its a disturbing fact that this is where younger people are being informed.