''An al Qaeda battleground''
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| Thu, 07-29-2004 - 3:50pm |
Has everyone forgotten about Iraq & Afghanistan?
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/12244715?source=PA
Iraq has become a "battleground" for al Qaeda and more troops are desperately needed to stop the war on terror going into reverse, a powerful report by MPs warns today.
The Commons foreign affairs committee blames too few soldiers and a "failure" by the coalition to impose law and order from the start of the occupation.
In a major 170-page report, it also warns that Afghanistan could "implode with terrible consequences" unless troops numbers are bolstered urgently.
The warnings are the strongest yet from the Labour-dominated committee. They come a day after a suicide bomber killed 70 people and injured 56 more in the worst atrocity in Iraq since the handover of power a month ago.
The committee paints a vivid picture, of the war on terror being at grave risk of losing ground. More effort is needed, it says, to stabilise the two countries.
"Iraq has become a battleground for al Qaeda with appalling consequences for the Iraqi people," the MPs say. "The failure to bring law and order to parts of Iraq created a vacuum into which criminal elements and militias have stepped."
This happened because an " insufficient number of troops" was deployed after last year's invasion - and because other countries gave a "disappointing" response to pleas by Britain and America for peacekeeping forces.
The committee urges Islamic countries to give military support, particularly in the run-up to elections due next year.
A major blunder, severely criticised in the report, was the decision by US occupation leader Paul Bremer to disband the old Iraqi army and purge members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, triggering counter-attacks.
The MPs call for more effort to improve living conditions, saying many Iraqis feel unsafe and lack necessities. "The failure to meet Iraqi expectations, whether realistic or not, risks damaging the credibility of the United Kingdom in
Iraq," the report says. It also rebukes government officials for "withholding" critical intelligence from ministers - in particular, details of the 45-minute claim about Iraqi chemical weapons and a Red Cross warning of human rights abuses by British troops.
Conservative committee member Sir John Stanley said Afghanistan was "absolutely on knife-edge". If the country did not get more help with security "everything we have achieved could be put back to square one," he said.
Committee chairman Donald Anderson said Iraq could also "go either way".
Iraq at Risk of Becoming 'Failed State' - MPs.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3271381


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U.S. troops, insurgents clash in Falluja
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/30/iraq.main/index.html
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday paid an unannounced visit to Baghdad, slipping into the Iraqi capital to meet with U.S. and Iraqi officials.
After landing at Baghdad's international airport, Powell was whisked via helicopter to the Green Zone for meetings with the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, a number of U.S. generals and several high-ranking Iraqi officials, including the interim president and deputy prime minister.
The secretary of state is also scheduled to pay a visit to Iraqi schoolchildren.
Powell is on weeklong tour that has already taken him Hungary, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. His trek will continue to Kuwait, Bosnia and Poland.
On Thursday, Powell met with Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Allawi accepted an invitation to visit the White House.
Allawi praised a Saudi plan that would send Muslim troops to Iraq to help stem fighting that took more than 100 lives this week.
He called on Muslim and Arab troops to close ranks against Islamic extremism.
"These terrorists and their conduct is far away from the values of Islam and Arab values," Allawi said. "The participation of Arab and Muslim states is important not only to support Iraq -- Iraq will be able to overcome its difficulties -- but it is important for the region to have a decisive position and decisive role against these groups that threaten the stability of the countries in the region.
"We have to stand together to confront these groups and be conscious of the Arab role and the Islamic role that should be the movement and the power behind that."
Under the proposed Saudi plan, any new Arab and Muslim troops would supplement coalition troops, not replace them, but could reduce the need for so many troops as security is restored, according to a State Department official. The Saudi initiative would involve Islamic nations that do not border Iraq, meaning Saudi troops would not be included. (Full story)
Later, the Iraqi delegation arrived in the United Arab Emirates, where Iraqi Planning Minister Mehdi al-Hafidh told reporters that the Saudis told them they are willing to invest $1 billion in Iraq.
At a news conference, Powell said the United States welcomes the plan, but stressed "these are preliminary ideas" that Washington "will be examining." He also noted there are many unanswered questions regarding the chain of command of such a force. The United States is unlikely to cede command of the multinational force before American troops leave Iraq.
The meeting came a day after at least 118 people died in widespread violence across Iraq. The deadliest attack Wednesday happened in Baquba, where at least 70 were killed and 56 wounded in a suicide car bombing.
Heavy fighting in Falluja
American military forces unleashed artillery, tank, and air fire in heavy overnight fighting with insurgents in the restive city of Falluja, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.
Dr. Mohammed Asma'ail from Falluja hospital told a CNN stringer that 13 Iraqis were killed and 14 were wounded during the clashes. Most of the dead and wounded were men. There were no American casualties.
According to the spokesman, a 1st Marine Expeditionary Force position came under mortar attack Thursday evening, leading to a larger firefight. The Marines were hit with rocket-propelled grenades, small arms fire and mortars.
The fighting extended into the early morning hours and Marines eventually called in close air support.
Pakistan caught in terror tit-for-tat.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FG31Df04.html
The Bush administration believes that it is an "interesting" idea, but Saudi Arabia's proposal to send an all-Muslim security force to Iraq is fraught with danger for any country that participates in such a force, and especially Pakistan.
The Saudi proposal, made by Crown Prince Abdullah to visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell this week, envisages troop contributions from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen and Bahrain, as well as former Soviet Union states. Iraqi officials have said they do not want nations that border Iraq to contribute, ruling out Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Jordan.
Powell called the proposal "an interesting idea" and suggested that a Muslim force could provide security for facilities, but it was not spelled out how the force would operate or to whom it would answer.
Powell's comments were preceded by the killing in Iraq of two Pakistani contract workers at the hands of militants, sending off alarm bells in Islamabad, and followed by a graphic warning from a terrorist group that "swords will be drawn" against anyone cooperating "with the Jews and the Christians".
Pakistanis Raja Azad, an engineer, and driver Mohammed Naeem, both working in Iraq, were confirmed as killed on Wednesday by a militant group calling itself the Islamic Army.
On Thursday, in a statement posted on an Islamic Internet site known to carry messages from militant groups, the Jamaat al-Tawhid al-Islamiya Omar el-Mukhtar Brigade - the main title means Group of Islamic Monotheism - warned of attacks against any Islamic or Arab nation that contributed troops to the Saudi-proposed Muslim force.
"Our swords will be drawn in the face of anyone who cooperates with the Jews and the Christians. We will strike with an iron fist all the traitors from the Arab governments who cooperate with the Zionists secretly or openly."
Omar el-Mukhtar is the name of a Libyan nationalist who fought against the Italian occupation and who was hanged by the colonial authorities in 1931.
A top Pakistani security official told Asia Times Online that the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf was taking the threat extremely seriously, so much so that almost all official functions have been canceled and the country's leaders are lying low.
The authorities are also mindful of the case of Amjad Hafeez, a Pakistani who was abducted in Iraq. He was released, and in his debriefing in Rawalpindi he said that as a Muslim and a Pakistani he had been treated very well, but the only reason he had been freed was to convey the message to the Musharraf administration that should it even try to send troops to Iraq, militants will target Pakistani interests all over the world.
Another official in Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau said that the Pakistani consul in Saudi Arabia was constantly sending alarming reports on the security situation in that country, predicting a highly volatile situation in the days ahead. The intelligence reports warn that there is a major problem within the Saudi security apparatus, as well as among clerics who are fiercely anti-US. They support the Iraqi insurgency and oppose the House of Saud for supporting the US-led "war on terror".
Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, though, are under strong US pressure to toe the Washington line, especially Pakistan, as a frontline state in the "war on terror". The fact that the two Pakistanis were killed is attributed to Islamabad not coming out and clearly saying that it will not send troops to Iraq, as the men's hostage-takers had demanded.
Trouble after trouble
Sindh province's authorities have declared a red alert in the volatile southern port city of Karachi
Isn't this interesting? Now that the ones who will benefit the most from a peaceful Iraq have been eliminated, do you really think other countries will go to battle. Dead fish!!!
I suspect that Allawi is using the US military for his own purposes. Do we really believe it is foreign fighters in Fallujah and not just political opponents?
"The strike underscores the fact that Iraq's interim government, scheduled to select an advisory council this weekend, is having no more success in quelling insurgent cells than the US had prior to installing this government on June 28. While there were some hopes that the motivation for such attacks would decrease with an Iraqi face on the country's interim leaders, those have now been laid to rest."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0729/p01s04-woiq.html
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
I get the impression, right or wrong, that the press is bored, for want of a better word, with Iraq. Now that Bremmar has left & the 'handover' took place it's history, or they wish it were.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/international/asia/04afgh.html?hp
For months Afghan and American officials have complained that even while Pakistan cooperates in the fight against Al Qaeda, militant Islamic groups there are training fighters and sending them into Afghanistan to attack American and Afghan forces.
Pakistani officials have rejected the allegations, saying they are unaware of any such training camps. Now the Afghan government has produced a young Pakistani, captured fighting with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan three months ago, whose story would seem to back its complaints about Pakistan.
The prisoner, who gave his name as Muhammad Sohail, is a 17-year-old from the Pakistani port city of Karachi, held by the Afghan authorities in Kabul. In an interview in late July, in front of several prison guards, he said Pakistan was allowing militant groups to train and organize insurgents to fight in Afghanistan. Mr. Sohail said he hoped that granting the interview would increase his chances of being freed. Mr. Sohail described his recruitment through his local mosque by a group listed by the United States as having terrorist links, his military training in a camp not far from the capital, Islamabad, and his dispatch with several other Pakistanis to Afghanistan.
He did not give all the details that intelligence officials said they gleaned from him in interrogations, but he talked easily about his party and its leaders, and said they had high-level support from within the establishment. He said he was recruited and trained within the past eight months by Jamiat-ul-Ansar, the new name for the Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen party, which was designated a terrorist group by the State Department and banned by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in January 2002. Under its new name it is functioning, if more discreetly, and its leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, moves around freely.
Mr. Khalil has been involved in recruiting and training militants since the 1980's. In 1998, American planes bombed his training camp in Afghanistan when they were targeting Osama bin Laden after the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bombing killed a number of Pakistanis, and Mr. Khalil at the time vowed to take revenge against America for the attack.
It is an open secret in Pakistan that groups supporting separatism in Kashmir have not stopped their activities, despite official declarations, and have continued to train men and infiltrate them into Indian Kashmir. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a visit to the region last month that Pakistan had not dismantled all the camps used to train militants for Kashmir. And while he praised Pakistan for its efforts against Al Qaeda, he urged the country to do more to stop Taliban militants carrying out attacks from Pakistan.
Mr. Sohail is not the first Pakistani to be captured fighting alongside the Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan over the past two years. On at least one occasion, Pakistanis who were captured in a joint American-Afghan military operation last year were handed back to Pakistan. But he is the first made available for an interview by the Afghan government. Intelligence officials said they found on him a Jamiat-ul-Ansar membership card and a list of phone numbers of high-level party officials.
A Pakistani official interviewed recently described Mr. Sohail as a "one-off case," and denied that Pakistani militants were showing up in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, Rustam Shah Mohmand, said he thought Jamiat-ul-Ansar and its network had been dismantled. "There is no ambiguity in our policy," he said. "The government does not sponsor, nor create, nor is aware of training camps. If they were aware of any, they would go and dismantle them."
Zalmay M. Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, has stated publicly that Pakistan has not done nearly enough to stop the Taliban and other militants from using Pakistan's border areas as operational and recruiting bases.
In a speech in Washington in April, he warned that if Pakistan did not do the job on its side of the border, American forces would have to do the job themselves.
A Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity in an interview last month in Kabul said: "When you talk about Taliban, it's like fish in a barrel in Pakistan. They train, they rest there. They get support."
Western diplomats in Kabul and Pakistani political analysts have said that Pakistan has continued to allow the Taliban to operate to retain influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan supported the Taliban in the 1990's as a way to create an area where Pakistani forces could retreat to the west if war erupted with its the country's longtime rival and neighbor to the east, India. Pakistan has also long tried to maintain influence over Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, because of its wariness of its own Pashtun minority in the border areas.
General Musharraf may also fear that a crackdown on the Taliban will provoke protests from an alliance of hard-line Islamist political parties that are now the third largest block in Parliament, the Western diplomat in Kabul said. And Pakistani officials may fear that the United States will abandon the region if Mr. bin Laden is captured.
In interviews along the border over the past two years, Pakistani government officials have made statements that they do not see the Taliban as a threat to Pakistan. They have also, at times, said the Taliban have a legitimate political grievance in Afghanistan.
Mr. Sohail was probably chosen to fight in Afghanistan because he is a Pashtun, the dominant group in the Taliban. Born in Swat, near the Afghan border, he grew up in Karachi, left school at 15 and went to work in a confectionary shop.
"I was going to the mosque every Thursday, and they were saying you should go and do jihad," he said. "In Palestine, Chechnya, Cuba, France and a lot of places all over the world, they are mistreating Muslims. So I decided to do it and got training for one month."
He traveled with a group of 15 others from his mosque to a training camp near Mansehra, north of Islamabad. It was a remote place, in the mountains with lots of trees, he said. There he received one month of training in explosives and weapons.
An uncle of Mr. Sohail's, reached by telephone in Karachi, said the family recently received a letter via the Red Cross from Mr. Sohail saying he was in an Afghan jail.
After their training in Mansehra, Mr. Sohail and his group went to Islamabad and met Mr. Khalil, the leader of Jamiat-ul-Ansar, at his headquarters.
Three months later, Mr. Khalil went to speak at their mosque and called the group up to fight, Mr. Sohail said. "He said, 'Go and fight the Americans.' "
They went to the Pakistani border town of Quetta, and then Mr. Sohail set off with four other fighters. They crossed over the main border and drove to the city of Kandahar. They went to a designated hotel and in a room found a bag with weapons. The next day they headed to a mountain base near the town of Panjwai, not far west of Kandahar, where they joined some 50 fighters and rapidly became involved in combat operations themselves.
Mr. Sohail's account becomes vague after that. He said he only fought for one night and returned to Pakistan. Sent back into Afghanistan to gather information about casualties, he approached some Afghan police, thinking they were Taliban. They arrested him.
He is accused of taking part in an attack on the Panjwai District center in April, in which a police officer and two aid workers were killed, security officials said.
Other militants who have been captured are Afghans from the refugee community in Pakistan. They have described receiving training in large, walled residential compounds in and around Quetta, rather than in military camps, according to Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, the governor of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.
One Afghan prisoner interviewed recently in Kandahar, who spent 10 years in a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan from the age of 14, complained that the arrival of American troops in Afghanistan brought behaviors that were against the Koran, including drinking alcohol and prostitution. "They are destroying Islam," the prisoner said.
Mr. Sohail has received a 20-year sentence from a judge in Kabul. His appeal is in progress.
"I'm very sad," he said mournfully. "The jihad is over for me." But he showed flashes of fanaticism, too. "I wish I was a prisoner of the Americans," he said. "Then I could die a martyr at their hands, or kill myself."
Heavy Fighting Against Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 3 (Reuters) - Afghan forces backed by American attack aircraft engaged in heavy fighting with suspected Taliban guerrillas near the border with Pakistan, the United States military said Tuesday. The military said as many as 50 guerrillas had been killed, but both an Afghan commander and a former Taliban official in the area said only 2 had died.
The military's casualty figure was based on estimates by pilots flying in support of Afghan soldiers in the battle, which started when the Taliban attacked the force on Monday morning. If confirmed, the total would be one of the heaviest losses the insurgents have suffered in a single battle in recent months.
But Abdul Rauf Akhund, the former governor of Khost under the Taliban, said by satellite phone that 2 Taliban fighters had died and 8 had been wounded, and that 10 Afghan soldiers had been killed.
Gen. Khialbaz Sherzai, an Afghan military commander in Khost, said Monday that he only knew of two Afghan soldiers and two Taliban fighters killed.
What About Iraq?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
funny thing happened after the United States transferred sovereignty over Iraq. On the ground, things didn't change, except for the worse.
But as Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect puts it, the cosmetic change in regime had the effect of "Afghanizing" the media coverage of Iraq.
He's referring to the way news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off sharply after the initial military defeat of the Taliban. A nation we had gone to war to liberate and had promised to secure and rebuild - a promise largely broken - once again became a small, faraway country of which we knew nothing.
Incredibly, the same thing happened to Iraq after June 28. Iraq stories moved to the inside pages of newspapers, and largely off TV screens. Many people got the impression that things had improved. Even journalists were taken in: a number of newspaper stories asserted that the rate of U.S. losses there fell after the handoff. (Actual figures: 42 American soldiers died in June, and 54 in July.)
The trouble with this shift of attention is that if we don't have a clear picture of what's actually happening in Iraq, we can't have a serious discussion of the options that remain for making the best of a very bad situation.
The military reality in Iraq is that there has been no letup in the insurgency, and large parts of the country seem to be effectively under the control of groups hostile to the U.S.-supported government.
In the spring, American forces won an impressive military victory against the Shiite forces of Moktada al-Sadr. But this victory hasn't curbed the movement; Mr. Sadr's forces, according to many reports, are the de facto government of Sadr City, a Baghdad slum with 2.5 million people, and seem to have strengthened their position in Najaf and other cities.
In Sunni areas, Falluja is enemy territory. Elsewhere in western Iraq, according to reports from Knight Ridder and The Los Angeles Times, U.S. forces have hunkered down, manning watch posts but not patrolling. In effect, this cedes control of the population to the insurgents. And everywhere, of course, the mortar attacks, bombings, kidnappings and assassinations go on.
Despite a two-month truce between Mr. Sadr and the United States military, heavy fighting broke out yesterday in Najaf, where a U.S. helicopter was shot down. There was also sporadic violence in Sadr City - where, according to reporters, American planes appeared to drop bombs - and in Basra.
Meanwhile, reconstruction has languished.
This summer, like last summer, there are severe shortages of electricity. Sewage is tainting the water supply, and typhoid and hepatitis are on the rise. Unemployment remains sky-high. Needless to say, all this undermines any chance for the new Iraqi government to gain wide support.
My point in describing all this bad news is not to be defeatist. It is to set some realistic context for the political debate.
One thing is clear: calls to "stay the course" are fatuous. The course we're on leads downhill. American soldiers keep winning battles, but we're losing the war: our military is under severe strain; we're creating more terrorists than we're killing; our reputation, including our moral authority, is damaged each month this goes on.
So am I saying we should cut and run? That's another loaded phrase. Nobody wants to see helicopters lifting the last Americans off the roofs of the Green Zone.
But we need to move quickly to end our position as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," the fate that none other than former President George H. W. Bush correctly warned could be the result of an invasion of Iraq. And that means turning real power over to Iraqis.
Again and again since the early months after the fall of Baghdad - when Paul Bremer III canceled local elections in order to keep the seats warm for our favorite exiles - U.S. officials have passed up the chance to promote credible Iraqi leaders. And each time the remaining choices get worse.
Yet we're still doing it. Ayad Allawi is, probably, something of a thug. Still, it's in our interests that he succeed.
But when Mr. Allawi proposed an amnesty for insurgents - a move that was obviously calculated to show that he wasn't an American puppet - American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home, stepped in to insist that insurgents who have killed Americans be excluded. Inevitably, this suggestion that American lives matter more than Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing, so Mr. Allawi now looks like a puppet.
Should we cut and run? No. But we should get realistic, and look in earnest for an exit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html?hp
August 6, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Failure of Leadership
By BOB HERBERT
nthony Dixon and Adam Froehlich were best friends who grew up in the suburbs of southern New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia. They went to junior high school together. They wrestled on the same team at Overbrook High School in the town of Pine Hill. They enlisted in the Army together in 2002. And both died in Iraq, in roadside bombings just four months apart.
Specialist Dixon was killed on Sunday in Samarra. Specialist Froehlich was killed in March near Baquba. They were 20 years old.
No one has a clue how this madness will end. As G.I.'s continue to fight and die in Iraq, the national leaders who put them needlessly in harm's way are now flashing orange alert signals to convey that Al Qaeda - the enemy that should have been in our sights all along - is poised to strike us again.
It's as if the government were following a script from the theater of the absurd. Instead of rallying our allies to a coordinated and relentless campaign against Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, we insulted the allies, gave them the back of our hand and arrogantly sent the bulk of our forces into the sand trap of Iraq.
Now we're in a fix.
The war in Iraq has intensified the hatred of America around the world and powerfully energized Al Qaeda-type insurgencies. At the same time, it has weakened our defenses by diverting the very resources we need - personnel, matériel and boatloads of cash - to meet the real terror threats.
President Bush's re-election mantra is that he's the leader who can keep America safe. But that message was stepped on by the urgent, if not frantic, disclosures this week by top administration officials that another Al Qaeda attack on the United States might be imminent.
A debate emerged almost immediately about whether the intelligence on which those disclosures were based was old or new, or a combination of both. Nevertheless, because of the growing sense of alarm, there was an expansion of the already ubiquitous armed, concrete-fortified sites in New York City and Washington.
The pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush. He came up with a gem of a Freudian slip yesterday. At a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
The nation seems paralyzed, unsure of what to do about Iraq or terrorism. The failure of leadership that led to the bonehead decision to invade Iraq remains painfully evident today. Nobody seems to know where we go from here.
What Americans need more than anything else right now is some honest information about the critical situations we're facing.
What's the military mission in Iraq? Can it be clearly defined? Is it achievable? At what cost and over what time frame? How many troops will be needed? How many casualties are we willing to accept? And how much suffering are we willing to endure here at home in terms of the domestic needs that are unmet?
Neither Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon was honest with the American people about Vietnam, and the result was a monumental tragedy. George W. Bush has not leveled with the nation about Iraq, and we are again trapped in a long, tragic nightmare.
As for the so-called war on terror, there is no evidence yet that the administration has a viable plan for counteracting Al Qaeda and its America-hating allies, offshoots and imitators. Whether this week's clumsy sequence of press conferences, leaks and alerts was politically motivated or not, the threat to the U.S. is both real and grave. And it can't be thwarted with military power alone.
Does the administration have any real sense of what motivates the nation's enemies? Does it understand the ways in which American policies are empowering its enemies? Does it grasp the crucial importance of international alliances and coordinated intelligence activity in fighting terror? And is it even beginning to think seriously about lessening our debilitating dependence on Middle Eastern oil?
The United States is the greatest military and economic power in the history of the planet. But it lacks a unifying sense of national purpose at the moment, and seems uncertain, even timid, as the national security challenges continue to mount. That is what a failure of leadership can do to a great power.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/opinion/06herbert.html?hp
That's why I asked at the start of this thread if everyone had forgotten about Iraq & Afghanistan. Keep the readers distracted with THKerry telling a rude reporter to "shove it", or terror warning that are 2-3 years old. Not that these warning SB ignored.
During WWll Churchill didn't broadcast that they'd learnt that X town was going to be bombed. Because that would have given away their source of info. Or does this strategy not
"The pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush. He came up with a gem of a Freudian slip yesterday. At a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." "
This was in the headline when I first went online this morning. Ironic.
"What's the military mission in Iraq? Can it be clearly defined? Is it achievable? At what cost and over what time frame? How many troops will be needed? How many casualties are we willing to accept? And how much suffering are we willing to endure here at home in terms of the domestic needs that are unmet?"
All questions that should
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