Thread: Obama will keep atleast 50,000 troops in Iraq at 58 military bases

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

Oh, bullshit. Only a landlubber would imagine that the skipper of a US destroyer has the audio of a towelheaded terrorist handy to paste into a faked radio exchange, just in case.

Those of us who've been to sea on naval ships are perfectly aware of how limited the intelligence officers have really is.

The incident was real. I have absolutely no reason to rely on reports from terrorists to tell me what was seen wasn't what happened.

Besides which, the video itself was sufficient. Those terrorists were like some teenage punk out to impress his latest whore by walking up to Mike Tyson and threatening to hit him.

STOP SPAMMING MY THREAD WITH YOUR QUADRUPLE POSTS!!

You obviously didnt read the evidence I provided from the New York Times and Washington Post. US officials and experts admited the voice didnt come from the Iranians. But no matter what I show you, you wont admit any evidence to the contrary. You seem to think any and all Arabs and Persions are terrorists. You dont know the definition.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

The war was wrong, not illegal.

Once the war was started, the occupation was inevitable.

The conquest of Iraq was aggression - "the supreme international crime" as defined by Nuremberg.

Originally Posted by Horhey

STOP SPAMMING MY THREAD WITH YOUR QUADRUPLE POSTS!!

You obviously didnt read the evidence I provided from the New York Times and Washington Post. US officials and experts admited the voice didnt come from the Iranians. But no matter what I show you, you wont admit any evidence to the contrary. You seem to think any and all Arabs and Persions are terrorists. You dont know the definition.



The conquest of Iraq was aggression - "the supreme international crime" as defined by Nuremberg.

Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that the Iran Despotic Guard aggressively threatened US warships in international waters. The commanders of those vessels would have been perfectly justified to sink those boats and steam over the crews, assuming any could swim.

The liberation of Iraq was what happened. Last time I checked, Iraq has it's own sovereign democratically elected governmnet....yep. I just checked again, it's still there. Thanks the US military operations helping to maintain it against international terrorists from Iran and Syria.

Originally Posted by michaelr

The war was based on lies, therefore that and the occupation is illegal.

Well, that's simply bullshit. The military operation was authorized by Congress, Congress had every obligation to investigate all "facts" presented to it, and every opportunity to do so, and voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

Ergo, by definition, it was not illegal.

You people need to quit fighting facts. Your desire to re-define words to mean their opposites only provides the enemy with more tools to defeat you.

Originally Posted by michaelr

First of all their Parliament wants us gone, as does Maliki.

Oh?

Really?

The Iraqi parliament issued a bill, signed into law by Maliki, demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq?

The Iraqis are not currently negotiating an extension of our agreement to authorize US troop presence in Iraq beyond the end of this year? Oh, yes they are. They're currently arguing about language on a deal that will keep US troops in Iraq for at least three more years.

Seriously, if they want us out, all they have to do is refuse this latest agreement, and 95% of Americans, included your's truly, would be happy to haul ass out of there.

We can use those troops here to start drilling for our own oil.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

Oh?

Really?

The Iraqi parliament issued a bill, signed into law by Maliki, demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq?

The Iraqis are not currently negotiating an extension of our agreement to authorize US troop presence in Iraq beyond the end of this year? Oh, yes they are. They're currently arguing about language on a deal that will keep US troops in Iraq for at least three more years.

Seriously, if they want us out, all they have to do is refuse this latest agreement, and 95% of Americans, included your's truly, would be happy to haul ass out of there.

We can use those troops here to start drilling for our own oil.

No. I just checked on this. The latest version of the SOFA says end of '09, and they're waiting until George Bush is GONE to conclude it.

Know why? The Senate finally put its foot down. Hooray!!! About f'in time, those rotten bastids did something for the PEOPLE.

You are aware, are you not, that Bushie was trying to conclude a SOFA with the full legal power of an international treaty, WITHOUT Congressional approval? As usual, the House complained about it and Bushie just ignored 'em, but this time the Senators actually stepped in and told Bushie, "you do that and you're finished".

So, being his good little Neo-Con WEASEL self, he backed down.

So now, not only does he NOT get to conclude the SOFA, which would have committed the US to protecting Iraq FOREVER, but the side effect is that now the Senate is playing buddy-buddy with the House again, which hasn't happened in EIGHT YEARS, and which is NECESSARY if they're to effectively fulfill their check-and-balances and oversight role in keeping a wayward president in check.

End of '09, that's what it looks like right now.

And I mean, it ain't January 20th yet. If Bushie gets into a rotten enough mood before that, he can STILL invalidate the election and impose martial law and go bomb Iran or somethin', and I mean, as things stand today, he could probably get away with it "legally".

Only, the American People, would tell him where to go put the letter of his stinkin' self-written law, and then next thing you know, we got Bushie being railroaded out of town in tar and feathers, with the blessing of the People and BOTH houses of Congress!

So it only took 7 years and 9 months for Congress to act like Congress? Wow. Great job, guys. What happened to them? They turned to jelly after 911. What a bunch of pussies. Let George Bush pass anything that had the word "Patriot" or "Homeland" or "Amurka" written across the top of it, such spineless lemmings they all were. Signed off on Iraq when they had to know it was a sham. All to save their own worthless asses.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that the Iran Despotic Guard aggressively threatened US warships in international waters. The commanders of those vessels would have been perfectly justified to sink those boats and steam over the crews, assuming any could swim.

The liberation of Iraq was what happened. Last time I checked, Iraq has it's own sovereign democratically elected governmnet....yep. I just checked again, it's still there. Thanks the US military operations helping to maintain it against international terrorists from Iran and Syria.

Over a million Iraqis have been killed or displaced since the 2003 "liberation" began. 95% of Iraqis view the US as an occupying force, not a liberating one. 98% believe the US invaded Iraq to take control of their enormous energy resources, establish permanent military bases and reorganize the Middle East in US-Israeli interests. 84% want the US to withdraw immediatly.

Democracy means you pay some attention to the will of the people. So the US should withdraw, as the Iraqis want them to, instead of trying to set up a client regime and military bases.

The United States tried, in every possible way, to prevent elections in Iraq. The elections came about because of mass nonviolent resistance, lead by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The editors of the Financial Times wrote that "the reason the elections took place was the insistence of the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who vetoed three schemes by the US-led occupation authorities to shelve or dilute them."

Middle East scholar Alan Richards observes that "although the United States initially oposed early elections in Iraq, after Ayatollah Sistani turned huge numbers of his followers out in the streets to demand such elections, Washington had little choice but to agree."

The Wall Street Journal explained that Sistani "gave his marching orders: spread the word that Ayatollah Sistani insists the new government be chosen through a direct election, not by the US or US apointed Iraqi leaders."

Veteran correspondent Patrick Cockburn adds that "it was only when it became clear that the US could not withstand a Shia uprising that elections turned out to have been an immediate American goal all along."

Once it was clear US efforts to bar elections could not be sustained, the US took credit for them while trying to subvert them. The US candidate, Iyad Allawi, was given every possible advantage: state resources and access to TV, as well as support from the US military. The most important independant media were expelled from the country.

There’s a good reason why the United States wont tolerate an independant Iraq. Were supposed to believe that the United States wouldve invaded Iraq its main exports was pickles. The US goal in Iraq is to establish permenant military bases in a dependant client state at the center of the world's major energy reserves.

Since World War II the US has understood that the energy resources of the Middle East are “a stupendous source of strategic power.� Eisenhower described the Gulf region as being “most strategically important area of the world becouse of its strategic position and resources." George Kennan said controling this stupendous source of strategic power gives the US "veto power" over what rivals might do.

Zbigniew Brzezinski writes "America has major strategic and economic interests in the Middle East that are dictated by the region's vast energy supplies. Not only does America benefit economically from the relatively low costs of Middle Eastern oil, but America's security role in the region gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region."

If the US is successful, they may allow democracy, but within limits. It will follow the "strong line of continuity" of US 'democracy promotion' in the post Cold War era. Thats why Iraqis expect the same model of democracy the US allows in Latin America.

Thomas Carothers writes from the perspective of an insider as well as a scholar, having served in Reagan's State Department during the 'democracy enhancement' programmes in Central America.

Carothers writes "there is a built-in tension or even contradiction in the recurrent impulse to promote democracy. The impulse is to promote democratic change but the underlying objective is to maintain the basic order of what, historically at least, are quite undemocratic societies."

"The United States mitigates this tension by promoting very limited, controlled forms of democratic change."

"The US inevitably sought only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied."

Carothers predicted that Washington's Iraq policies would extend this strong line of continuity: they will "likely exhibit similar contradictions between stated principles and political reality."

One of the leading specialists on Central America, Thomas Walker, distributed an op ed to newspapers around the country describing the "free elections" under US domination in El Salvador. These elections, he reminds us, "were held against a backdrop of state terror which had taken the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civillians, crippled civil society, and completely silenced oposition media."

He added, the candidates were "limited to a narrow spectrum from center to far right; voter absentation was threatened with murder, and votes were cast using sequentially numbered, identifiable ballots deposited in clear plastic boxes in front of armed soldiers - so translucent that the ballots could be read even when duly folded."

During the US-Contra terrorist war and 1990 elections in Nicaragua, he observed "the voters chose a candidate of Washington's choice with a gun to their heads."

The Bush administration said the achievements in El Salvador would be a model for Iraq.

Robert Pastor, President Carter's national security advisor for Latin America writes "the United States did not want to control Nicaragua or the other nations of the region, but it also did not want developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently,except when doing so would affect US interests adversely."

Similar dilemmas faced US planners after the invasion of Iraq. They want Iraqis "to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely."

Let's just focus on the record of US 'democracy promotion' in Iraq before the 2003 invasion. After the first Gulf War, the Bush administration authorized Saddam Hussein to crush a shia rebellion that probobly wouldve overthrown him.

Leith Kubba, head of the London-based Iraqi Democratic Reform Movement, said that the U.S. favors a military dictatorship, insisting that "changes in the regime must come from within, from people already in power."

Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, said that "the United States, covered by the fig leaf of non-interference in Iraqi affairs, is waiting for Saddam to butcher the insurgents in the hope that he can be overthrown later by a suitable officer."

Administration reasoning was outlined by New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman, "While oposing the popular rebellion, Washington did hope that a military coup might remove Saddam, and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without SaddamHussein."

"It has always been American policy that the iron-fisted Mr. Hussein plays a useful role in holding Iraq together."

New York Times reporter Alan Cowell reported that Washington and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view that whatever the sins of the iraqi leader he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression."

The Bush administration officials that are telling us we invaded Iraq to spread democracy are the same people that supported Saddam right through his worst atrocites. The current administration supported the "Beast of Baghdad" when he used chemical weapons against Iran, and when he "gassed his own people".

They continued to support Saddam by providing him with means to develop weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and biological, right up to the invasion of Kuwait becouse of “our duty to support U.S. exporters� as John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State explained.

In 1989 Bush authorized new loans for Saddam, to achieve the "goal of increasing U.S. exports."

If you look back even further documents reveal the Saddam Hussein regime was a US creation that was installed in a bloody CIA military coup in 1963.

After the overthrow of the Britsh backed Iraqi regime in 1958 by Abdul Karim Qasim, the US was concerned the new regime might have "plans to use Saudi petrodollars to improve the living standards of poor Arabs everywhere", Secretary of State Dulles railed.

US Intelligence reported that "popular feeling in the Arab world, even in such states as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, is generally favorable to the Iraqi coup and hostile to US and UK intervention so there is a strong possibility that the revolutionary infenction will spread."

The virus was dangerous and had to be destroyed. And it was, in 1963. According to former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris, confirmed by other sources, "The Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in callaboration with Saddam Hussein." And it was, "almost certainly a gain for our side, National Security Council aide Robert Komer informed Kennedy the day of the takeover."

The usual hideous atrocities followed. Using lists provided by the CIA, much as in Guatemala in 1954 and in Indonesia two years after the overthrow of Qasim, "The Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite," Morris continues, including "hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers, and other professionals as well as military and political figures."

This is just the US record in Iraq. The much broader record of US 'democracy promotion' in a long list of other countries shows the "strong line of continuity". To believe the US invaded Iraq to fulfill Bush's "messianic mission" to bring democracy to Iraq, the region and the world, it requires us to supress knowledge that turns this latest pretext on it's head. Declarations of benign intent by leaders are entirely predictable - even the worst monsters - and they carry no information.

"Paul Wolfowitz, is the Bush administration’s idealist in chief."

"He reads about the Arab world, bleeds for its oppression and dreams of liberating it".


A War of Choice, and One Who Chose It (washingtonpost.com)





"His (Wolfowitz) passion is the advance of democracy".


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5757-2005Mar27.html



Andrew Balls - The Financial Times

"The promotion of democracy has been one of the most consistent themes of his (Wolfowitz) career".


A Glimpse of the World: Loan wolf: Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank




The evaluation of Wolfowitz in the elite press is instructive. No evidence is cited apart from Wolfowitz's self image. A look at the actual record is revealing. This is just one example of the "strong line of continuity" of US 'democracy promotion' in the Third World. I just feel like picking on "Wolfy" for some reason. Richard Holbrooke is next.


Care and Feeding of Dictators

Wolfowitz's Tenure in Indonesia Eyed - washingtonpost.com

By ROBIN McDOWELL
The Associated Press
Friday, May 4, 2007; 5:29 AM

-- JAKARTA, Indonesia _ The controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spotlights a lack of ethics that was apparent two decades ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, say critics who recall how he failed to speak out against corruption and rights abuses.

Today, as head of the bank, Wolfowitz has been arguing that corruption is crippling the world's poorest nations. But that was "the very thing he closed his eyes to" when he served as ambassador from 1986 to 1989 during the regime of the dictator Suharto, said pro-democracy activist Binny Buchori.

"He's a hypocrite," she said. "He should quit."

Wolfowitz is fighting for his job after disclosing that he helped arrange a promotion and raises for his girlfriend Shaha Riza soon after taking over the bank's helm in 2005. Wolfowitz says he is the victim of a smear campaign and has refused to resign.

But Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political economy at Northwestern University, said that Wolfowitz's past career already showed he was ill fit to run the World Bank.

"From the very beginning, I felt this was the wrong person for the job," said Winters.

He pointed to the radical deregulation of Indonesia's banking sector in 1988, promoted by Wolfowitz's economic team and international lenders. "Indonesia implemented one of the most reckless deregulations of a banking sector ever undertaken. Pushed by the World Bank, the IMF, and Wolfowitz's Economic Policy Support Office (EPSO) at the U.S. embassy, Indonesia's technocrats opened the floodgate for local crony conglomerates to set up private banks across the country and take in deposits from a trusting public".

With no rule of law, there was no oversight and no supervision, he said. "The foxes were running wild in the financial chicken coop and no one, including Wolfowitz, pressured the Indonesians to design safeguards to protect the public's deposits," he said. "He helped set the stage for this collapse of the Indonesian economy, a tragedy that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty".

"The Telegraph reported that, Mr. Wolfowitz had described an Australian newspaper article that accurately reported the Suharto dictatorship's abuses of human rights as 'bad' and told a press conference on his arrival in Jakarta that the U.S. would handle the sort of situation it created with the Indonesian Government by playing down the article and trying to ignore it."

According to Los Angeles Times reporters Jack Nelson and Eleanor Clift, "Paul D. Wolfowitz, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, had urged the Indonesians to withdraw the ban on the journalists for fear that it would draw attention to the human rights issue. Administration officials had emphasized that Reagan had no plan to raise human rights with Suharto and would prefer that the issue not be raised publicly."

Suharto, who ruled for 32 years, was toppled in 1998 by pro-democracy demonstrations.

The former dictator's family has been accused of embezzling an estimated $35 billion in state funds during his regime, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed under the dictator's brutal reign.

"Wolfowitz never criticized human rights issues, let along corruption," said Asmara Nababan, executive director of the pro-democracy research institute, Demos. By staying silent, he "was saying 'don't worry about your domestic problems, America is here to back you."

Late May 1997, Wolfowitz defended General Suharto when he told Congress that "any balanced judgment of the situation in Indonesia today, including the very important and sensitive issue of human rights, needs to take account of the significant progress that Indonesia has already made and needs to acknowledge that much of this progress has to be credited to the strong and remarkable leadership of president Suharto".