A Horrible Day in Iraq!

[leftchick]

<snip>BAGHDAD, Iraq - Car bombers struck the international Red Cross headquarters and four police stations across Baghdad on Monday, killing almost 40 people in a spree of destruction that terrorized the Iraqi capital on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, police and the U.S. military reported.

About 10 were killed at the international Red Cross and 27 elsewhere, most of them Iraqis but including at least one U.S. soldier, the officials said. There was no confirmation from U.S. authorities about the purported American death.

The bombings came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents devastated a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a rocket barrage, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people.

It was two days of violence unprecedented in this city of 5 million people since the end of the U.S.-Iraq (news - web sites) war last April, attacks aimed at the American-led occupation and those perceived as working with it.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=1&u=/ap/20031027/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

I am guessing we will not see today's daily roundup of atrocities on our morning news shows,so here it is.
Bring our Soldiers Home Now!
:cry:

[ozymandius]

1. Remember: this is "unwinnable".

How many times do we have to read the writing on the wall? We have no damned business being there.

[mooseknuckle]

2. run away

can anyone enlighten me by telling me what they think will happen if we pick up and leave Iraq? will the bloodshed cease? or will there be even more chaos?

[trumad]

3. Young American Men will live to see another day....

good enough for me...

[JNelson6563]

4. "run away"

intersting choice of words friend....

I think what we need to do is this: Go the The UN, ask them for help. No gloating. No obnoxiousness. Cede authority. Cede control of the oil. Make this an international effort, not an American occupation.

Please do not use the term "coalition of the willing" to argue that this is and internaitonal effort already as the bulk of that is the "coalition of the bought and paid for".

Iraq does not want to be occupied. America is occupying Iraq. We are providing recruiting materials to every would be terrorist recruiter in the world.

This must end.

Julie

[Fla_Democrat]

8. They would be happier

being occupied by the U.N.?

There would be no more killing of U.S. troops?
There would be no more killing of U.N. personel?
There would be no more bombings, no more killing of new Iraqi police, no killing of Red Cross/Red Crescent people?

Not quite sure I buy that. Sorry. :shrug:

[Paschall]

12. Occupied by the UN?!?

Since when does the UN have an army? When in its half-century history did the UN ever "occupy" a country?

The idea is to cede authority to the Iraqis under UN mandate. Many observers feel that security would then improve across the board so the UN could go on providing the Iraqis the aid it has through at least a dozen different programs for the past decade. Otherwise, the UN will pull out entirely and the Iraqis--60 percent of whom relied on the UN for sustenance--will indeed be abandoned to chaos.

When we invaded, we had 3 million rations ready to provide to the population. Have you done the math? There are 25 million Iraqis. How long do you think the food we prepared for them lasted?

Or to look at the problem from a different angle, check out this article I posted yesterday. The insecurity and lack of basic services actually serves US corporate interests.

Big Bucks in Iraq

[Dogmudgeon]

9. "Cede control of the oil."

What oil?

The figures we used to have were wrong. Saddam vastly inflated the petroleum reserves estimates in order to curry favor with nations that depend on oil. Some experts estimate that the reserves may only be 30% as great as we thought they were just a year or two ago.

Once again, a minor, nickel-plated thug has skunked the Great and Mighty OZ, not to mention our Wise and Courageous Leader, George Bush.

Here's the painful facts: we stuck our bare arms, all the way up to the elbows, into a hornet's nest, all because the mean kid down the block told us there would be honey. Not just any honey, but magic honey.

Without an Iraqi oil bounty, I give it three to five years before the cost of recovering the ever-deeper oil elsewhere in the world starts to skyrocket. By that time, Bush will be serving a lengthy sentence in a special wing at Levenworth, the world will have discovered the Euro, and parents from Barcelona to Helsinki will be telling their kids, "finish your dinner -- there are kids starving in America!"

--bkl

[Paschall]

13. Whether there is any oil flowing or not...

...Shrub has, by executive order, made it America's. Check it out. The US has--by unilateral mandate--seized any oil revenu that Iraq may generate.

Rescinding that order would--IMHO--go a long way to reducing tension. And is simply the moral thing to do.

[KoKo]

16. Nice rant about the "honey," Bare knuckled! What a wonderful image!

So true!

[lefty_mcduff]

15. Absolutely.

Iraq has to be interanationalized right now. And not the BS version that the misadministration is bragging about (some country sending 100s of tonnes of tea is NOT a sign of an international effort). Chimp and Co need to eat some humble pie, cancel the sweetheart deals for their rich oil-buddies and get the hell out of Dodge.

The Iraqi people DO NOT WANT THEIR COUNTRY TO BE OCCUPIED. The Iraqi people DO NOT WANT THEIR RESOURCES STOLEN BY US CORPORATIONS. How difficult is that to grasp?

In a mind-boggling example of spin, Wolfowitz (sic?) was quoted yesterday as saying that the people who were shooting US soldiers and blowing stuff up were doing so because they were against a 'free Iraq'. It is this mentality that is getting people killed.

[leftchick]

6. I give the Iraqi people way more credit...

I believe they can patch their country up much better than you give them credit for. Certainly better than aWol the destroyer is doing! With "real" international help and an end to US Occupation they stand a much better chance.

[DrBB]

14. It's a damn good question

We made this mess and now we're floundering in it, but we can't just bug out--that would only compound the obscenity.

Somehow the perception that we are occupiers after a war of conquest has to be refuted. The one way to do that, the ONLY way, is to stop acting like occupiers after a war of conquest. That means one thing: control over Iraq's resources has to be ceded. The only way to end that perception is to end the reality behind it. This is something that can't be done by the current WH regime. Even if they were capable of admitting an error and changing their posture accordingly, I believe they have zero credibility with the outside world, no matter how many countries they can dragoon into kicking in a few bucks to help out (note: most of the "astonishing" $33 billion pledged at the donor conference was pledged by US). I believe only an election that decisively kicks these idiots out will set up a situation where we can go back to the world and say, Phew, delusion's over, sorry about that--dunno who those whackjobs were, but they're gone now, so let's try to figure this thing out and get the US as far out of the picture as possible.

[Lexingtonian]

5. Oh dear.

Yet another day on which the press won't be reporting the "Good News!" agitprop.

[dbt]

7. Captain, the filter is breaking up!

It cannae stand the strain!!

:freak:
dbt

[teryang]

10. Military and economic failure

Progress doesn't get any better than this. Anyone that thinks we can "fix" Iraq is delusional.

Every time I hear a Democratic person say "we broke it, we have to fix it," I wan't to scream. When you do wrong, when you kill people without justification or legal cause, when you invade countries that haven't attacked, when you occupy a country you are completely ignorant about, you can't "fix" anything. Those acts have consequences beyond our control. How anyone could have faith that this government is capable of "fixing" anything beyond a contract bid or an election is perplexing. It reveals a complete lack of insight into human affairs.

Offer the Iraqis humanitarian aid and economic assistance by all means- but get our troops out. Surely the consequences couldn't be any worse than what we have done already. And if the consequences do get worse, there is nothing we can do about that anyway. Cut the losses now- get our military personnel home. All those freebooting contractors and their mercenaries who wish to stay- knock yourselves out!

[NNN0LHI]

20. Our dollars would go a lot further with Iraq spending them than us

Seen an interview this morning of an Iraqi guy who asked why do you bring western workers here when we have Iraqis who will do the same job for one tenth of what they are being paid. Makes sense to me.

Don

[quaker bill]

11. Mission Accomplished???

This is worse that even Rummy's "long hard slog".

This is officially "going to hell in a handbasket".

The war can not be won. We have no easily indentifiable enemy, no massed columns to attack. In this context all of our technical superiority is useless.

The Taliban is retaking ground and Afganistan. Iraq is turning into an unmitigated disaster.

We already had our Vietnam. Russia had their Afganistan. The Israeli ocupation is a bloody mess 40 years on.

We need to bring the troops home, pay reparations to fix Iraq, and as an act of true contrition on the international stage impeach, convict, and remove from office, everyone that got us into this mess. I don't mean just Shrubya* but work on down the order of succession until we get to someone who had no part in this.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

17. Bush says (saw a snippet on the news this AM):

"Our progress is making them desperate."

Egads, who writes his material?

[leftchick]

18. he also said...

they hate us for our freedoms, about 20 times! Does anyone really believe that shit? He looked absolutly pathetic too!

[drfemoe]

19. I heard him say

..paraphrase..

.. those people will kill Iraqis .. they are killers ..

...
whereas our bullets and bombs simply liberate Iraqis from their earthly form ??