Post by Flash on May 3, 2008 16:01:37 GMT -5
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IRAQ
Post by Flash on Mar 12, 2007, 7:49am
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications — hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact — put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and improving its prospects will be difficult. It will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:
• First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly "constitutional" — meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today.
• Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States.
As Congress awakens to these realities — and a few members have bravely pointed them out — will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
1. We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess — the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained.
2. We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put Shiite groups in power — groups supported by Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused?
3. We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaida in Iraq. But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaida. The longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaida has become. The American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaida there now.
4. We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" — whatever that meant to them — but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing their minds.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops.
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.
• The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.
• Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.
• Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region.
• Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.
William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute. He wrote this piece for the Washington Post.
Re: IRAQ
Post by Flash on Mar 16, 2007, 10:56am
I beheaded US journalist, says al-Qa'ida chief
* Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent
* March 16, 2007
SEPTEMBER 11 kingpin Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has confessed to personally beheading US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, the Pentagon revealed overnight, in addition to plotting the 2002 Bali bombings and attacks on the US and Israeli embassies in Canberra.
* Full Guantanamo hearing transcript (pdf)
* Your say: Khalid's incredible confession
* Audio: Terrorism expert Clive Williams on the confession
In startling new detail from one of Osama bin Laden's leading al-Qa'ida operational commanders, Mohammed confessed at a US military hearing to plotting to kill former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and the late pope John Paul II.
And he admitted to planning the destruction of Big Ben and Canary Wharf in London, the Panama Canal, Israeli and US embassies across the world, including in Australia, as well as a host of other horrific conspiracies.
“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” Mohammed said in a statement, read by a US military officer at the hearing held at the US camp for “war on terror” suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon confirmed that Mohammed also said he had murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose videotaped beheading shocked the world in 2002.
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mohammed said in the statement read out at the hearing.
"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head," he said.
Mohammed's admission to taking Pearl's life was deleted from the transcript until the journalist's family had been notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Mohammed attended a secret enemy combatant hearing on Saturday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which he admitted without reservation his leading role in masterminding the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001 and the Bali bombing, according to edited transcripts of the hearing released by the Pentagon yesterday.
"I was the operational director for Sheik Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation," he said through his representative, a member of the US military.
The Pakistani's representative then read his confession - which Mohammed said was made without duress - in full, saying his planning and financing of al-Qa'ida terrorist attacks stretched back to the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Centre's twin towers in New York in 1993.
It was the first confession in a list of 31 terrorist plots, some successful, some not. No2 on the list was the 2001 attacks. "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," the statement said.
The Bali attacks were sixth: "I was responsible for the bombing of the nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals," the statement added.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the linking of al-Qa'ida to the Bali attack was of particular concern to Australia. "We're obviously glad Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is in Guantanamo Bay, we're glad that he's facing justice and it's important he does so because by his own admission his behaviour has been beyond the pale," Mr Downer told ABC radio.
Mohammed is among 14 prisoners identified by US authorities as "high-value" terrorism suspects and transferred last year from secret CIA prisons abroad to Guantanamo Bay, where Adelaide man and al-Qa'ida suspect David Hicks has been detained for more than five years.
The hearings are to determine if his status as enemy combatant applies, seemingly a certainty given the confession.
Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handed over to the US.
His terrorist hit list also included plots for a second wave of attacks throughout the US after 9/11, with a series of skyscrapers targeted, namely the Library Towers in California, Chicago's Sears Tower, Plaza Bank in Washington state and New York's Empire State Building.
Mohammed also admitted being responsible for planning, financing and following up with operations to destroy US military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Strait of Gibraltar and Singapore port.
An attack that killed two US soldiers in Kuwait and a "shoe bomber" operation to down two US planes were also his responsibility, he said in the statement.
Mohammed also organised the attempt by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. He admitted to plots against Mr Carter, as well as Mr Clinton and the late pope John Paul II on their respective visits to The Philippines.
Attacks on the NATO headquarters in Europe, and more terrorist attacks in which passenger planes would be commandeered on departure from Saudi Arabia and crashed into targets in Israel were also planned, his statement read.
What emerges from the transcripts is the portrait of a professional terrorist with a twisted sense of history, at one point comparing himself to George Washington, who led the US in its 18th-century revolutionary war against British rule and became the US's first president.
According to the transcript of Mohammed's exchanges at the hearing, he says Washington was a "hero" and that bin Laden was "doing the same thing".
"He is just fighting. He needs his independence," he said, adding that many Muslims "have been oppressed by America".
"If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain (sic)," he said, "for sure they would consider him enemy combatant."
While freely admitting he was an enemy combatant, Mohammed insists that many detainees in Guantanamo Bay were not, adding they had been "unjustly arrested", including what he said was the "funny" story in which the US had detained Sunni agents captured in Afghanistan who had originally been sent to the country to assassinate bin Laden.
There was also a glimpse of remorse over the numbers of deaths on September 11 - close to 3000 - with Mohammed saying "the language of any war in the world is killing".
"I don't like to kill people. I feel very sorry they been killed kids in 9/11 (sic). What will I do? This is the language."
Mohammed also claimed that he was tortured by the CIA after his capture in 2003.
During an exchange, the military colonel who heads the three-member panel asked him about allegations that the al-Qa'ida leader was subject to torture.
"Is any statement that you made, was it because of this treatment, to use your word, you claim torture?" the colonel said. "Do you make any statements because of that?"
Portions of Mohammed's response were deleted from the transcript, and his answer, like many of his comments, were unclear. But the colonel said that Mohammed's torture allegations would be "reported for any investigation that may be appropriate" and also would be taken into account in consideration of his enemy combatant status.
The transcripts also lay out evidence against Mohammed, saying that a computer seized during his capture included detailed information about the September 11 plot - ranging from names and photographs of the hijackers to photographs of hijacker Mohammad Atta's pilot's licence.
The Pentagon also released transcripts of the hearings of two other terrorist, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh, though Binalshibh refused to attend his session.
Re: IRAQ
Post by Flash on Apr 30, 2007, 2:34am
Here is a question for everyone. Without a plan, muchless a timetable for withdrawl of coalition troops from Iraq, where is the insentive for the Iraqi's to govern for themselve's? Or is the lack of a plan by the Bush administration just a veiled attempt to have Iraq (and it's oil reserves, for which the war was really waged for) become the 53rd state of the USA?Content-type: text/html error calling pre_print -- at /usr/local/PBV4.5/modules/print.pl line 89.
aussieseek.proboards25.com/index.cgi?board=main&action=display&thread=405
IRAQ
Post by Flash on Mar 12, 2007, 7:49am
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications — hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact — put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and improving its prospects will be difficult. It will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:
• First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly "constitutional" — meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today.
• Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States.
As Congress awakens to these realities — and a few members have bravely pointed them out — will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
1. We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess — the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained.
2. We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put Shiite groups in power — groups supported by Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused?
3. We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaida in Iraq. But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaida. The longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaida has become. The American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaida there now.
4. We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" — whatever that meant to them — but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing their minds.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops.
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.
• The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.
• Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.
• Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region.
• Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.
William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute. He wrote this piece for the Washington Post.
Re: IRAQ
Post by Flash on Mar 16, 2007, 10:56am
I beheaded US journalist, says al-Qa'ida chief
* Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent
* March 16, 2007
SEPTEMBER 11 kingpin Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has confessed to personally beheading US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, the Pentagon revealed overnight, in addition to plotting the 2002 Bali bombings and attacks on the US and Israeli embassies in Canberra.
* Full Guantanamo hearing transcript (pdf)
* Your say: Khalid's incredible confession
* Audio: Terrorism expert Clive Williams on the confession
In startling new detail from one of Osama bin Laden's leading al-Qa'ida operational commanders, Mohammed confessed at a US military hearing to plotting to kill former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and the late pope John Paul II.
And he admitted to planning the destruction of Big Ben and Canary Wharf in London, the Panama Canal, Israeli and US embassies across the world, including in Australia, as well as a host of other horrific conspiracies.
“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” Mohammed said in a statement, read by a US military officer at the hearing held at the US camp for “war on terror” suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon confirmed that Mohammed also said he had murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose videotaped beheading shocked the world in 2002.
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mohammed said in the statement read out at the hearing.
"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head," he said.
Mohammed's admission to taking Pearl's life was deleted from the transcript until the journalist's family had been notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Mohammed attended a secret enemy combatant hearing on Saturday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which he admitted without reservation his leading role in masterminding the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001 and the Bali bombing, according to edited transcripts of the hearing released by the Pentagon yesterday.
"I was the operational director for Sheik Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation," he said through his representative, a member of the US military.
The Pakistani's representative then read his confession - which Mohammed said was made without duress - in full, saying his planning and financing of al-Qa'ida terrorist attacks stretched back to the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Centre's twin towers in New York in 1993.
It was the first confession in a list of 31 terrorist plots, some successful, some not. No2 on the list was the 2001 attacks. "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," the statement said.
The Bali attacks were sixth: "I was responsible for the bombing of the nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals," the statement added.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the linking of al-Qa'ida to the Bali attack was of particular concern to Australia. "We're obviously glad Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is in Guantanamo Bay, we're glad that he's facing justice and it's important he does so because by his own admission his behaviour has been beyond the pale," Mr Downer told ABC radio.
Mohammed is among 14 prisoners identified by US authorities as "high-value" terrorism suspects and transferred last year from secret CIA prisons abroad to Guantanamo Bay, where Adelaide man and al-Qa'ida suspect David Hicks has been detained for more than five years.
The hearings are to determine if his status as enemy combatant applies, seemingly a certainty given the confession.
Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handed over to the US.
His terrorist hit list also included plots for a second wave of attacks throughout the US after 9/11, with a series of skyscrapers targeted, namely the Library Towers in California, Chicago's Sears Tower, Plaza Bank in Washington state and New York's Empire State Building.
Mohammed also admitted being responsible for planning, financing and following up with operations to destroy US military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Strait of Gibraltar and Singapore port.
An attack that killed two US soldiers in Kuwait and a "shoe bomber" operation to down two US planes were also his responsibility, he said in the statement.
Mohammed also organised the attempt by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. He admitted to plots against Mr Carter, as well as Mr Clinton and the late pope John Paul II on their respective visits to The Philippines.
Attacks on the NATO headquarters in Europe, and more terrorist attacks in which passenger planes would be commandeered on departure from Saudi Arabia and crashed into targets in Israel were also planned, his statement read.
What emerges from the transcripts is the portrait of a professional terrorist with a twisted sense of history, at one point comparing himself to George Washington, who led the US in its 18th-century revolutionary war against British rule and became the US's first president.
According to the transcript of Mohammed's exchanges at the hearing, he says Washington was a "hero" and that bin Laden was "doing the same thing".
"He is just fighting. He needs his independence," he said, adding that many Muslims "have been oppressed by America".
"If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain (sic)," he said, "for sure they would consider him enemy combatant."
While freely admitting he was an enemy combatant, Mohammed insists that many detainees in Guantanamo Bay were not, adding they had been "unjustly arrested", including what he said was the "funny" story in which the US had detained Sunni agents captured in Afghanistan who had originally been sent to the country to assassinate bin Laden.
There was also a glimpse of remorse over the numbers of deaths on September 11 - close to 3000 - with Mohammed saying "the language of any war in the world is killing".
"I don't like to kill people. I feel very sorry they been killed kids in 9/11 (sic). What will I do? This is the language."
Mohammed also claimed that he was tortured by the CIA after his capture in 2003.
During an exchange, the military colonel who heads the three-member panel asked him about allegations that the al-Qa'ida leader was subject to torture.
"Is any statement that you made, was it because of this treatment, to use your word, you claim torture?" the colonel said. "Do you make any statements because of that?"
Portions of Mohammed's response were deleted from the transcript, and his answer, like many of his comments, were unclear. But the colonel said that Mohammed's torture allegations would be "reported for any investigation that may be appropriate" and also would be taken into account in consideration of his enemy combatant status.
The transcripts also lay out evidence against Mohammed, saying that a computer seized during his capture included detailed information about the September 11 plot - ranging from names and photographs of the hijackers to photographs of hijacker Mohammad Atta's pilot's licence.
The Pentagon also released transcripts of the hearings of two other terrorist, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh, though Binalshibh refused to attend his session.
Re: IRAQ
Post by Flash on Apr 30, 2007, 2:34am
Here is a question for everyone. Without a plan, muchless a timetable for withdrawl of coalition troops from Iraq, where is the insentive for the Iraqi's to govern for themselve's? Or is the lack of a plan by the Bush administration just a veiled attempt to have Iraq (and it's oil reserves, for which the war was really waged for) become the 53rd state of the USA?Content-type: text/html error calling pre_print -- at /usr/local/PBV4.5/modules/print.pl line 89.