At least one aspect of next month’s anticipated report on Iraq is suddenly becoming apparent. Yesterday, the administration, through its various spokespersons, launched a multi-barreled attack on Britain for its preparations to “cut and run†from its involvement in the southern city of Basra, and its immediate area.
A senior U.S. officer was quoted in the English on-line news service, The Telegraph, as saying: “The short version is the Brits have lost Basra if, indeed they ever had it….For a long time - more than a year - they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties.
"Quite frankly what they're doing right now is not any value-added. They're just sitting there. They're not involved. The situation there gets worse by the day. Americans are disappointed because, in their minds, this thing is still winnable. They don't intend to cut and run."
Then, General Jack Keane, the architect of the surge strategy, who has just returned from Baghdad, and who is closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney and Stephen Hadley, President George W Bush's national security adviser, told The Sunday Telegraph: "It is disappointing and frustrating to see a situation in Basra that was once working pretty well, now coming apart. The situation there has been getting worse for some time."
US Marine Colonel Gary Anderson, who has conducted recent Iraq war games for the Pentagon, was also quoted in today’s report. He said the situation Britain would leave behind in Basra "could be the most bloody part of the transition….The primary issue in Basra will be a struggle between various Shia factions for control of the region, and frankly the regular government in Baghdad as well. It will be between pro-Iranian factions and those that are more nationalistic. It's going to be nasty…..British troops did the best they could, but I'm not sure they did as good a job as they did traditionally. This isn't Northern Ireland. They thought they had a pretty good model but Iraq is a different culture."
Another Pentagon official said that they were predicting a virtual civil war in Basra, once the British troops leave.
The Brit bashing continued in another report also filed in London, yesterday. Stephen Biddle, a member of a group that advised U.S. Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq last year, told the Sunday Times that insurgents and militia groups were likely to target British soldiers with ambushes, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades as they leave. It will be a hard withdrawal. They want the image of a British defeat….It will be ugly and embarrassing."
Britain has incurred a total of 168 military deaths in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion and it is expected to hand over control of Basra to Iraqi troops in the next few months.
However, despite all of the attention being focused on Basra, the city has rarely been mentioned in reports of violence. According to today’s LA Times, last week brought “the deadliest suicide bombings since the American-led invasion in 2003.†The attacks occurred in Baghdad, Ramadi and the Kirkuk area, but none in Basra.  On Tuesday, synchronized truck bombings killed an estimated 400 people who were members of the Yazidi religious sect in three northern villages.
In his weekly radio address, yesterday, Bush reassured the nation that he saw “signs of progress†in Iraq. He said: “Americans can be encouraged…that the rule of law is being restored.†He cited the work of the American-led provincial reconstruction teams in promoting political and economic development in each province.
However, a report just put out by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, noted that the teams “had not achieved notable results.â€
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense, last week, released the obituaries of 22 military personnel killed in Iraq, ranging in age from 20 to 39.
According to the website www.icasualties.org, U.S. deaths in Iraq now stand at 3,706, including six whose relatives are being notified today.
Also, last week, the Department of Defense released the obituaries of six soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan were 358, as of August 11th, according to the Pentagon.
Fourteen (50%) of the total casualties, were caused by improvised explosive devices.
Among the fallen heroes was Army Sgt. Travon Johnson, 29, of Ontario, California, who was serving his third deployment in Afghanistan. A report in today’s LA Times said that, as a student in high school, “TJ,†as he was known to his friends, was always involved in helping others. He served as a student assistant, and, after school, he would volunteer at Westwind Community Center. He also participated in a recruiting drive for the California Conservation Corps.
He eventually wanted to settle down with his wife, Sara, and make a profession of serving in the Riverside County Sherriff’s Department. Friends described him as a patriot who believed in America and in President Bush.
He was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in a district just east of Kabul.
His grieving family includes his two children.
Â
Â
recommend
Facebook
Twitter
bookmark 
print
Comments: 33
It didn't take us long to point our fingers toward the Brits. Such a fickle ally we are...
I'm delighted Bush thinks things are going so much better. He sucks.
Thanks also for your comments, James, George (my thoughts, too), and Dave A.....Of course, without knowing what lies ahead for Basra, I can only say that, in reviewing all the news from Iraq, every week for over a year now, I can barely remember any serious incidents in that area....This fact seems inconsistant with the new propaganda campaign...
Maybe the criticisms from Bush now is just setting the stage as an excuse to not have to go into that area full bore to help them retreat IF it gets bad for them.?.
At the end it shows how Bagdhad is carved up among different groups.
The situation is too chaotic now to do anything, and Iraqi distrust of
foreigners is too high to accomplish anything positive anymore.
The main thing I got out of this documentary was the consistent bad
decisions ... almost 100% at every turn .... that the Bush administration
made from 911 to now to get us in the f-ed up position we are now in
and to make it almost impossible for anything to fix these problems.
It goes far beyond what could happen by accident or even incompetence.
It is like Bush wanted to scramble everything and everyone in this
country to take it back to the stone age and completely f- it up
and draw in its neighbors to get them to fight each other.
Of that is so, then somewhere there was a think tank and paper
trail to detail all of these decisions that needs to come out and
explain why they chose this cynical disastrous path over trying to
nation-build.
I do not think Bush lied about not engagin in nation-building at all.
the path he did. It could be that the nation building path had an
even worse probability of success and would have left more infrastructure
in place to be more of a threat to the west, after all when Hussein fell
it was not a tough assumption to assume that Iraq was going to
likely go either Sunni or Shiite.
The mess-em-up path has been an old standby for the countries
in this area that there is no way to rationally deal with ... there may
be good rational expert statistical data that this was the best way
to save money, lives and stability, but the explanation would have
been impossible, so it had to be marketed. Not sure if I should
have post this here or on that article about 1984 come to pass?
It is like Bush wanted to scramble everything and everyone in this
country to take it back to the stone age and completely f- it up
and draw in its neighbors to get them to fight each other."
There's a school of thought that believes most conundrums can be solved, or at least better understood, if one just follows the money.
If you apply that here, you find a strong correlation between the increasing chaos and the soaring profitability for individuals and companies closely aligned with the administration.
That's a purely circumstancial leap, of course, but it is true that we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that either went missing or ended up in the pockets of the FOG (Friends Of George).
That's a lot of money, and certainly enough to launch any kind of conspiracy you might want to dream up. If Bruce is correct in his conclusion that the apparent screw-ups were, in fact, well planned for a purpose, then the above scenario is a valid possibility....
Harking back to a Seinfeld episode when George discovered that he too was 100% deficient in making decisions, maybe the nation should follow the solution that he successfully adopted.
In that case, Bush would be kept on as a consultant to the next president, who would then proceed to do the exact opposite of whatever Bush recommends.....ergo success.
I can imagine a scenario where when faced with the certain rational descisions the best one might have been exactly what Bush did.
One of the reasons I mentioned to people about the 2004 election for not voting for Bush was that to me the main reason not to give him another terms was that 911, this weird thing, happened in his term. That alone would have been enough for me to want to change leaders to ensure that if there was any connection that they did not carry with us into the future of this conflict - to cut the connection.
War is a cold and dangerous game, and though I am not a historian I think there are quite a few things about WWII that we do not know that could tell us just how cynical and determined to win the way and gain power our government was. That natural condition of nation states, businesses and even people seems to be disagreement, it is impossible to run a country, at least the way the world is not the way some of our more altruistic citizens would llike to ... even if you went into most of our personal lives and pointed out the unaltruistic things most of us seem to do, or at least the people who "succeed" financially.
Like it or not the cynical self-interested player of games seems to prosper over time, and build up power and influence, how would that not control the outlook from the head of government, and lead them to have to mythologize the world to the people in some way.
The short answer is that our leaders were taken in by the neocons who controlled the PNAC and by it statement of policy which called for us to launch preemtive invasions when necessary to maintain our superpower status in the world....It just turned out a little different than they anticipated
That's the short, non-conspiracy-type answer, although therein may also lie a conspiracy. However, when you try to apply this logical short-answer to the invasion of iraq, it doesn't leave you with the feeling that the "answer" actually fits the question all that well....
"The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances BEFORE (caps added) crises emerge, and to meet threats BEFORE they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.
"Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
"• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
"Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next."
Unless of course one thinks that such theories are ILLOGICAL and IRRATONAL. But the only people that would think that about ALL of the theories are just the believers of, and the apologists for, THE SYSTEM, that constantly implies there are no such conspiracies and that only idiots would think so.
When one looks deep enough with an open mind, one can see the trails and tracks of evidence that are entirely logical and rational ... in fact, it would be downright stupid to NOT think that there was fire behind the smoke.
As for 'messing up' Iraq and/or the middle east, letting them kill each other, that may be the oldest trick in the book, 'Divide and Conquer', it is so much easier to just let all of the factions war themselves out before taking the final control, it saves having to do anything yourself earlier on.
Do we not realize that just that, is being done here at home via the extreme polarization between our two political parties ? As long as we are busy contending with each other our eyes are much less on the leaders above who arrange it all.
Just food for thought.
It is reasonable to infer there's fire inside the smoke, but turning on the hose and spraying water is a waste if you do not know where the fire is and you have a limited amount of water.
the other thing that always I think about since this started...we presume that Bush and his contingents can read, and that to be a politician, strict long term studies in history/herstory would be mandated. And their test scores above average.
I go back in my mind to the French revolution. A governement has never been toppled without significant blood shed within its own climate. faction rise against one another, splits, arguements, disagreements on an open forum of no government has always brought the quackers out of the closet. One day a hero, the next day head in the guillitine. Is the US that childish as to believe that our presense being there or not being there is going to change the results of a revolution, a coup, wheter instigated from without or within. And our unfortunate problem is that we are splitting too.
I have been sleeping alot. would someone clue me in to where Bin Laden is? has he been caught yet?
> Is the US that childish as to believe that our presense
> being there or not being there is going to change the
> results of a revolution, a coup, wheter instigated from
> without or within.
Who are you to stand up and have the arrogance to call
anyone childish. You use the historic fact of the French
Revolution, but neither the French Revolution or any other
revolution has a precedent that applies to Iraq, unless one
is an incompetently enough of a historian to assume that any
precedent they can think of applies merely because it is
what they can think of.
People every minute of every day now make the most
boringly idiotic comparisons with Nazi Germany, it don't
make it so.
Bush promised not to Nation build, and he kept his
promise, he nation-destroyed Iraq under the cover
of nation building. There are lots of people who looking
back on this debacle see that it might have been
well accomplished if at least one or two things had
been done right.
And as to precedent, goverment are toppled regularly
in Western Democracies with not a single causualty.
...and, PeggyAnn, I love the way your mind grasps the situation, L'il Sis. As for Osama, nothing serious has been done since the Bushies and the Bin Laden family agreed that he would not be caught in return for the absence of any terrorist acts on U.S. soil. Oh my God, there goes another conspiracy theory. Sonofagun, they just slip out when you least expect them....
My aim is to get people to 'think' just enough to figure out what is really going on in our social system, as far as I am concerned, it is not very pretty. People need to be aware before they can effectively change anything.
As it is now, the shadows do hold those that conspire, there is smoke that indicates so … but then there are people that speak up just like you do that think that there is no such thing as a conspiracy, that the leaders are all just too nice to be involved … or that people like yourself are just too smart to be fooled and only us idiots looking for someone to blame because we cannot handle things ,are the ones that wear tin-foil hats and believe there might be shenanigans taking place in upper circles of like thinkers.
I would say that just maybe your head is in the sand of denial by either choice or fear because you cannot handle the fact that fires ignored and left undisputed may grow into conflagrations beyond control.
But we do have those in this nation that so identify with their neoCON leaders that they will always be apologists for them as good little loyal followers should be if they want to be around for the trickledown scraps when their side 'wins' … or they get 'promoted' for their loyalty.
If I cannot meet people somewhere on some kind of common ground and I am quite sure I am OK on my philosophic stand, then I will be more than happy to be divided from them … I am surely NOT going to change to be just like them for the sake of unity like the "America, love it or leave it" crowd would want.
to be a conspiracy, though I do not believe that Bush caused
911 or wants to implement martial law, if that means nice?
I am trying to point of the ineffectiveness of 300 million
Americans are with different values, expertise, life-experience,
political agendas, and exposure to information all trying to
guess what happened at 911. If the story did not sound
right to enough people maybe the whole country should
go on strike or something, but trying to agree ... I've seen
you posting in Gather for some time ... when have you
heard more than two peolpe agree for longer than
minutes at a time.
If our system is so compromised that 911 was a false
flag operation then there is no hope of what really
happened coming out, and there is no hope for the
country until some redefining event..
By the way, read my posts, I'm not apologizing
for the Neocons, though I don't think the problem
since 2001 has been the Neocons, it has specifically
been the core Bush administration and how they
have not demonstrated any competence as a
management group.
" ... David, it is indeed uncanny how all these happenings seem to disengage our reasoning and force us into conspiracy theories and into the irrational parts of our personalities. With all the blogging and noise and events people are just overwhelmed and often seem to need to escape into humor or irrationality. ... "
I guess that is where we diverged. I most definitely do not buy into all theories, but some of the more 'major' ones that I am quite aware of, I surely do. 9/11 is not one of them I have studied much so do not have much of an opinion about it, but I will say that the more I hear about it the more I believe it was possible to some degree or other.
The problem with the apologists for the "No such thing" crowd, is that they use certain isolated facts, the more outlandish and implausible the better (and often things that the think tanks make up for just that reason, disinformation), to denounce all theories, as if one false concept destroys the whole idea ... that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater IMnsHO.
As for 'Bush' being involved with any conspiracy, I would not put it past him. But I do believe he is relatively a 'bit player' where he dances to others in his administration ... who all dance to others above them in the shadows ... now THAT is one conspiracy I do most definitely believe in ... and along with that comes the possibility of a fascist government of this nation down the road ... it does not take a belief in conspiracy to see all of the things this admin has done to ease their path to just that ... in fact it takes real denial of truth to ignore or defend what they have been doing for all of these years with very little fanfare from the 'free' press. I am already too tired to continue this ...
My problem with 9/11 is that it was poorly investigated to say the least, leaving far too many questions unanswered, and - on top of that - it was quite obvious that it was the subject of a media blackout.
The same problem precisely applies to the widespread election fraud that occurred particularly during the last two presidential elections, with much of the fraud involving the voting machines which are still out there. Again, poorly investigated and the subject of a media blackout.
These circumstances provide a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. If there wasn't, in fact, a conspiracy in each of the above two instances, then shame on those in power for allowing such a perception to be created.
When corporate wealth buys, they buy it all, at least all of the big ones. They own not only the media as we think we know it, but the movie industry, book publishing houses, all of the major TV and radio outlets, newspapers, and on and on.
If people would only begin to think about it, remove themselves from their comfort zone, then do some research via the Internet (the only thing of real value not YET controlled by them), they might just find out the truth about these claims I make. The information exists, but you would not expect the owners to tell you would you IF it might threaten their goals ? That is why you are not aware of so much,. because if it were public knowledge, they could not get away with it.
We have been fed fairy tales all of our lives, and that is over 67 years in my case. I also believed most of it for the bulk of my life. But there eventually comes a time IF and when TRUTH is desired, that you will have to look at alternative sources to find it. I have done so, and I tell you that it is highly recommended. Maybe it will scare you at first, then it will piss you off, then you will want to get even (revenge), but eventually you come to know that it is just the way of the world and the way of heaven and hell are also involved, then you know that each and all will get back just what they have put out ... that being just what they deserve.
So all you want to to by then is expose them to others to free others up, maybe to the point of getting enough people awake to even change the trend ... before it is too late.
The time is now !
yeah right. it boggles my mind that you seem to think that the Internet is a primary source of information and that you can believe anything you read here. if the corporations own all the news and media which is somewhat regulated what makes you think they do not own or put out most of the garbage on the internet for their own reasons which has no regulation at all?
jerry you are so great at imagining the blind spot in everyone else, and thinking that you do not have one yourself.
reality is shared ... reality is what you can get other people to believe in and act on, and that is the source of america's power, corporate power, and most other power. running off down a single branch of a conspiracy theory is useless to everyone including the person who is doing it. words are common symbols reality is common mental constructs.
the constructs of western civilization are the most powerful ever evolved. it does not make them perfect any more than the error in them makes the game of evolution any different today than it has ever been or western civilization any worse than any that coexist or came before.
Please be sure and post all of your photos, posts and videos to the group and don't forget to stop by and comment on group content!