How BUSH Created a Terrorist Haven

“"Regime Change 2004!"

<G>”

“GW was in my neighborhood yesterday. I was unaware, until I heard his speech, that cutting taxes cures all ills. So, don't worry about a thing, folks.”

“the state dept is the washington establishment elite. they consider the white as nothing more than the Christmas help, a temporary annoyance. beurocratic fat cats feeding at the public trough.....i could go on...


"I like when the enemy shoots at me; then I know where the bastards
are and can kill them." --Gen. George Patton


JIHAD VIOLIN!”

“translation please?”

“He only read the headline. When he saw "Ex-Envoy" the talk radio catchphrase 'State Dept. Wimps' popped into his head.

He never got to the second paragraph to see that Anthony Zinni is a retired general from the Marine Corps.”

“Thanks Tilt.”

“Chilling warning from the Feb 2003 report by the Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College.

"Successfully executing the postwar occupation of Iraq is
consequently every bit as important as winning the war.
Preparing for the postwar rehabilitation of the Iraqi
political system will probably be more difficult and complex
than planning for combat. Massive resources need to be
focused on this effort well before the first shot is fired.
Thinking about the war now and the occupation later is not
an acceptable solution. Without an overwhelming effort to
prepare for occupation, the United States may find itself in a
radically different world over the next few years, a world in
which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale
shadow of new problems of America’s own making."”

“ZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzzzZZZZz......”

“grease up the shoot strat man. Daddy Donald is coming home! this time, wear some lipstick.”

“AND the italics.”

“Color blind and italic challenged?”

“http://www.soulpacific.com/images/rummy-world.gif">”

“RummyWorld! LOL


Hmmm.... I dunno.... What color is that?”

“Meanwhile, two presumed deadlines for civilians being held hostage by militants in Iraq passed with no sign of their release.

A 10 p.m. ET Saturday deadline set by militants holding a man who appears to be American has passed with no word. The militants said Saturday that their captive might face harsh treatment if U.S. forces have not left Fallujah by 10 p.m. ET -- 12 hours after the demand was made.

Separately, the Japanese Kyodo news agency reported three Japanese hostages would be freed at 3 a.m. GMT Sunday (11 p.m. ET Saturday).

But that deadline passed too with no word on whether the hostages were let go.

The kidnappers have threatened to burn the Japanese hostages alive Sunday unless Japan pulls its troops out of Iraq. (Full story)

About two hours after the deadline, Japan's Jiji news agency reported that the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera said the hostages had been released. But Al-Jazeera quickly denied this."We did not issue such a report," an Al Jazeera official told Reuters news agency, referring to the report by Jiji.

Earlier, a glum but poised man --possibly American -- spoke at gunpoint, a burning tanker in the background, from the back seat of a car where an armed and masked gunman sat beside him in a video aired Saturday by the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The hostage identified himself as Thomas Hamill and spoke with an American accent.

Later, the same man appeared on Al-Jazeera TV in a hostage video, reciting a statement that he was being treated well.

But an apparent Iraqi hostage-taker issued a threat in the second video, saying the man would be dealt with severely within hours if U.S. troops don't leave Fallujah, where Marines and Iraqi forces have been fighting insurgents.

A senior Pentagon official would not confirm the existence of a U.S. hostage, but said that the United States "does not negotiate with hostage-takers or terrorists."

Halliburton, which provides products and services to the oil and gas industry, would not comment on a report Saturday night that the man works for the Houston-based engineering and contracting firm Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

"We are monitoring the current situation in Iraq and continue to work closely with coalition authorities regarding the safety and security of all our personnel in the region, but it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time," Halliburton said in a statement."To protect the privacy of the employees' families, who have been affected by such terrible losses, we will not release their names or discuss details of any incident."

Ominous trend
Saturday's chilling videos almost certainly showed one of several missing or kidnapped overseas nationals, an ominous trend in recent days and another new challenge taxing U.S.-led forces trying to quell the anti-coalition insurgency.

It has not been confirmed that the man was one of the people unaccounted for after a convoy was ambushed Friday west of Baghdad.


Demonstrators in Tokyo have been demanding Japan recall its troops following the taking of three hostages.
Two U.S. soldiers and four civilian contractors are missing after the incident, in which a soldier and an Iraqi died. In recent days, three Japanese civilians -- a journalist, a non-governmental organization worker and an aid worker -- and an Arab man from Jerusalem and a Syrian-born Canadian, both aid workers, have been kidnapped.

Two German security workers are missing and believed dead.

Al-Jazeera reported Saturday that the three Japanese were to be released in the next 24 hours.

Seven South Korean Christian missionaries were released Thursday after kidnappers held them for several hours.”

“LoL! good for a laugh in the morning”

“Yeah, ya just gotta love the guilt factor of the left.

"It's all out fault! I don't know what IT really is but I'm sure it's OUR fault!"”

“It's Bush's fault.”

“No, it's the terrorists fault.”

“Now Buddha, by being negative you're helping "the enemy".

Think happy thoughts!”

“lol”

“Check the thread title. Bush IS creating a terrorist haven, As Predicted. Everyone except the other chickenhawks like Perle, Cheney and Wolfowitz tried to warn him.

How many will die before Junior's Big Adventure comes to an end? Where's Your guilt for supporting this idiocy?”

“goes by the title "Doofy's Big Adventure" in Canada and Guam.”

“It sure beats the crap outta Ronnie Raygun's little jamborees in Grenada and Panama.”

“hehehe”

“"A senior Pentagon official would not confirm the existence of a U.S. hostage, but said that the United States "does not negotiate with hostage-takers or terrorists."

.....Except for Raygun who negotiated with the Iranians.”

“Check the thread title. Bush IS creating a terrorist haven, As Predicted. Everyone except the other chickenhawks like Perle, Cheney and Wolfowitz tried to warn him.

How many will die before Junior's Big Adventure comes to an end? Where's Your guilt for supporting this idiocy?"
Tilt
05:26:50 PM
04/12/04

It's easier to kill the terrorists if they're all in one place. As far as how many of the terrorists will die before it's over, hopefully all of them.”

“Have you seen the faces of the people they are now fighting in the citys...

Many are children, 14/16 years old...know where they came from....mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers killed by us, either as insurgents or innocent bystanders, to them it doesn't matter.

We have created more terrorists in Iraqi in the last year then were in the whole damn world a year ago.”

“I don't see how Bush created a save haven for terrorists. Might want to ask the families of the some 600 of them that gave up the ghost for their cause just last week. I wonder how safe they think they are?”

“and they know where you live....”

“"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." .... John Stuart Mill.

it occurs to me that there are quite a lot of people in this country who fit that description. Most of them will vote for john kerry in november.”

“BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An anti-kidnapping fatwa issued by Muslim clerics failed to prevent 11 Russian civilians from being abducted Monday in Iraq, and efforts to broker a full cease-fire in Fallujah were reportedly making slow progress.

Seven Chinese men were freed by their captors Monday, but the fate of some 20 other kidnapped foreign civilians, including the Russians, remains uncertain.

Meanwhile, the insurgent uprising from Najaf to Tikrit is making this month the deadliest one since the war in Iraq began in March 2003. With April not yet half over, at least 73 U.S. troops have been killed in hostile action; 26 of them died in fighting over the weekend.

Militants had vowed Saturday to burn alive the three Japanese civilians -- a journalist, a nongovernmental organization worker and an aid worker -- if Japan didn't pull its forces from Iraq by Sunday. Full story

There has been no official word on their fate.

The deadline has also passed for U.S. troops to withdraw from Fallujah, as militants holding U.S. truck driver Thomas Hamill demanded, threatening to kill him if their demand is not met.

Hamill was taken captive during an ambush on a fuel convoy Friday near Baghdad International Airport. One U.S. soldier and an Iraqi driver were killed in the incident, and 12 people were wounded. Two U.S. troops are also missing.

Six other civilian contractors working for the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root -- some of them Americans -- are unaccounted for after being ambushed over the weekend, according to the Pentagon.

Two Arab men working for aid agencies are also being held by militants, one a Syrian-born Canadian and the other a resident of Jerusalem.

In other hostage developments, militants released British citizen Gary Teeley on Sunday. Teeley, who lives in the Middle East, was reported missing Thursday.

Al-Jazeera also broadcast video Sunday of eight civilians, identified as hostages, being released, including people from Pakistan, the Philippines, India and Turkey.

Bush has created a terrorist haven if not a total frigging mess.





...nothing which is more important than his own personal safety,


Iraq is not about personal safety, stupid. It's Dubya's pwersonal jihad against Saddam.”

“StickmanWalking - You think there are a finite number of terrorists and they've all been drawn to Iraq? Your argument is nonsense.


So strat... you've enlisted and requested front line duty? Or are you being kept free by the exertions of better men than yourself?”

“BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The unidentified remains of four bodies have been found in Iraq near Baghdad, two U.S. State Department officials said Tuesday.

Efforts are under way to identify the remains, the officials said.

The mutilated bodies were found on the outskirts of the capital, another State Department official said.

The Coalition Provisional Authority has notified the energy-services firm Halliburton Co. of the discovery of the bodies.

Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, employed seven contractors who have gone missing in Iraq, one of whom is confirmed to be a hostage.”

“It's not my argument, it's the argument of anyone who thinks Bush created a terrorist haven. I was simply operating on the premise someone else put forth, that Bush created a terrorist haven. Your assumption was way off base.”

“I believe the premise is that by invading, we have created more terrorists and drawn people to the terrorist cause.”

“The U.S. should start taking hostages. Start dragging people's bodies through the streets. Downright executing terrorists and their families. The only thing these people understand is overwhelming firepower. Drop a nuke in Fallujah and kill these dirty bastards.



I'm hungry for some ice cream. 8)”

“Bush HAS taken hostages and HAS killed families. Nothing new there.”

“AL-SADR IS PLAYING NICE ALL OF A SUDDEN

Prominent Shiite "cleric" (terrorist) Moqtadad al-Sadr has now come out and softened his stance. Reportedly, he has dropped all his conditions for negotiations with the Coalition. No longer is he demanding that the Coalition troops have to leave the area before he'll stop his terror campaign. Apparently he is pledging to follow some other cleric named Al Marjeiya, who is apparently the highest Shiite authority. Hard to keep up with all the clerics following the other clerics. Does anybody do anything over there without some cleric telling them what to do? Whatever. Who cares.

The Coalition has said that doesn't matter...they intend to capture or kill al-Sadr for the murder of a pro-American rival last year. Good. Now is not the time to start negotiating with Islamic terrorists. Why do you suppose this lunatic wants to negotiate all of a sudden? Because we have him surrounded, that's why. He's in a position of weakness, and he knows that casualty-averse elements in the United States and the rest of the world might be ready to take him up on his offer to bargain, but we can't let that happen. We have got to stop being nice..it is not going to be rewarded.

Some in the Iraqi leadership want to compromise with al-Sadr. Screw that noise. This guy is wanted for murder, and if we're going to teach the Iraqis the rule of law, then they need to know that you do not cut deals with murderers. Besides, the United States and its allies are the occupying force in Iraq. It's time we started acting like it.

The sooner we capture al-Sadr and send him on his trip to see Allah, the better.

You no doubt saw the headline yesterday that one of the four Italian hostages in Iraq was tragically executed. A videotape of the murder was sent to the Al-Jazeera terrorist television network, and they declined to air it because they said "it was too graphic." How nice of them...not out of respect for the victim's family, but because it was too graphic for TV. Thanks for nothing.

The typical reaction from most liberals and the media, not to mention various other Euro-weenies, would be to fold. People hear about something like this and just want to give in. Not the Italians. This is what you would call leadership, something you don't see from countries like Spain anymore, for instance. The kidnappers are demanding that Italy and its 3,000 troops leave Iraq. Not a chance, says Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. He says the killing of the hostage would not affect their efforts there. This is called standing up for what's right, instead of caving in. We need more allies like this.

You can't negotiate with terrorists...you have to speak their language, which is death and violence. It's a very simple offer: do what we say, or we'll kill you. That should get their attention.

Nice to see Italy hasn't joined the axis of weasels.”

“April 13, 2004, 10:56PM

First order of business: deadly force
By GEORGE F. WILL


At the battle of Shiloh in April 1862, a wounded soldier who had been told to leave his weapon and go to the rear soon returned, saying, "Gimme another gun. This blame fight ain't got any rear." Neither does the fighting in Iraq, which one Marine officer compares to "scaling a live volcano." Another officer says Iraq is for today's Marines their Guadalcanal, Chosin Reservoir and Hue City. That may overstate matters, but characterizations of the insurgents as merely "thugs" who "hate democracy" trivializes what is not trivial — coordinated military activities by forces that are menacing U.S. supply lines and that have agendas more complicated than dislike of democracy.

Fortunately, the Marines trained for this. Seven years ago, Gen. Charles Krulak, then commandant of the Corps, considered Chechnya, that cauldron of religious and ethnic strife, as the template of coming conflicts. Now, as then, Krulak talks about "the three-block war."

In today's conflicts, he says, you can have a Marine wrapping a child in swaddling clothes. And a Marine keeping two warring factions apart at gunpoint. And a Marine in medium- or high-intensity combat. It can be the same Marine, in a 24-hour time frame, in just three city blocks.

"You can't," he says, "defeat an idea with just bullets — you need a better idea." But first you need bullets. You need, Krulak says, the enemy "to be petrified," as were the Germans who gave U.S. Marines a name that stuck — "devil dogs" — as a term of respect when, at Belleau Wood, Marines blunted the Germans' 1918 drive on Paris.

There is a heart-rending ingenuousness to American efforts at amicability, even to the point of encouraging Marines, before they entered Fallujah last month, to grow mustaches, as many Iraqi men do. Shiloh, where almost 24,000 Americans were casualties, was where both sides in the Civil War lost their illusions about it being a short and not-too-bloody war. After Fallujah, it is clear that the first order of business for Marines and other U.S. forces is their basic business — inflicting deadly force.

Revising Robert Frost's axiom that the best way out is always through, Henry Kissinger says of Iraq, "Success is the only exit strategy." In the short run, success means making the militias, and especially the cleric Moqtada Sadr's, pay a terrible price, partly for taking payments from Iran. Unless Sadr's militia is smashed, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani will be marginalized.

Unfortunately, how to define success in the long, or even middling, run remains unclear. Yes, of course, democracy — a glittering example that transforms the region — would be nice. But the first task of government is order, which is necessary to prevent Iraq from becoming a vacuum into which violent Islamic radicalism flows. Order requires more Americans carrying guns, and more nations carrying costs and responsibilities that America is now bearing.

Sen. Joseph Biden says that French President Jacques Chirac has told him that France would participate in a NATO involvement in Iraq. With perhaps 8 million Muslims in France legally or illegally, France has a stake in preventing the transformation of Iraq into another incubator of Muslim radicalism.

No sensible person wants the United Nations involved because of any competency. Before the war, the United Nations presided over spectacular corruption in the oil-for-food program. After the war, it took just one bomb to blow the United Nations out of Iraq. And the democratic forces in Iraq despise the United Nations as a collaborator with Saddam Hussein. However, some involvement by the United Nations would usefully blur the clarity of U.S. primacy.

It is unclear why America, its armed forces stretched thin and its budget spilling red ink, should hoard its responsibilities for reconciling Iraq's irreconcilables. In less than 11 weeks "sovereignty" of sorts will, the administration insists, be transferred from the Coalition Provisional Authority to ...

When Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator, was asked who would receive it, he said, "Well, that's a good question." Iraqi security forces are much more than 11 weeks away from being able cope with the ethnic, sectarian and political violence.

Last week The New York Times carried this headline: "A Decade After Massacres, Rwanda Outlaws Ethnicity." Because extremist Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, a government decree, backed by re-education camps, has declared ethnic distinctions nonexistent.

It is a shame that the Rwanda solution won't work in Iraq. Or Rwanda, for that matter.”

“Can't negotiate with terrorists, hmmm?

Well Dang.

Better wake up Ronnie Raygun and tell him, LOL. And clue in those other creeps John Poindexter and Ollie North while you're at it.

The way this administration is being run, there's no telling what craziness is going on behind the curtain Right Now.”

“Titanic irresponsibility
Thomas Sowell
April 13, 2004
The so-called "9/11 Commission" is supposedly trying to find out what happened, or failed to happen, that allowed the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 to succeed. But there is a big difference between trying to unearth facts about September 11, 2001 and trying to collect political ammunition for November 2, 2004 -- election day.

It has become painfully obvious from some Commission members' grandstanding, especially during their questioning of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, that they are more interested in scoring political points during an election year than in finding out what happened before the terrorist attacks in 2001.

Many of what was presented to Dr. Rice as questions were really political speeches -- and the fact that the questioners tried to keep her from replying to their insinuations showed how little interest they had in finding out facts.

After all, Condoleezza Rice had already testified for hours before this same commission in private, so calling her back to testify again before television cameras was pure politics.

The underlying assumption that an unprecedented surprise attack could succeed only if there was an intelligence failure is one of the signs of the lack of realism in our times. During World War II, the American government knew that the Japanese were likely to attack us somewhere, somehow, during the last months of 1941 -- but that was wholly different from knowing that they were going to bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7th.

To some today, the fact that the Bush administration had warnings that al-Qaeda was up to something should have told them that terrorists were going to fly planes into the World Trade Center on September 11th.

We already know from Osama bin Laden himself that not even all the terrorists on the hijacked planes that flew into the World Trade Center knew that this was what those in the cockpit were going to do. If hijackers on board the planes didn't know, how could anyone else know?

The same people who have been criticizing our Homeland Security's generalized warnings and alerts seem to think that generalized information before September 11th should have let the administration know what specifically the terrorists were going to do and when and how they were going to do it.

Commission member and former Senator Bob Kerrey argued that President Bush had enough information on the terrorist networks before September 11th to ask Congress for a declaration of war on them.

Put aside the fact that this commission is supposed to be finding out what actually happened, not drawing up plays like Monday morning quarterbacks. Can you imagine what would have happened if President Bush had done what Bob Kerrey suggested?

Suppose the president had somehow managed to get the closely divided Congress to issue a declaration of war against terrorist networks prior to 9/11 and then 9/11 happened. You know and I know that the president's declaration of war would have been blamed for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Loud cries would be ringing out across the land that this would never have happened except for President Bush's declaration of war. You can just hear the words and the music.

All this political grandstanding is taking place in the shadow of the greatest danger our nation has ever faced. North Korea is not only rebuilding its nuclear capacity, it is a threat to sell nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations, including those who planned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Make no mistake about it. We could wake up some morning and find American cities in smoldering radioactive ruins.

Against the background, partisan political grandstanding is obscene. It is as if officers on the Titanic were spending their time arguing among themselves about who should have seen the iceberg, instead of getting people into lifeboats.

We already know that our enemies are following American political bickering. Senator John Kerry's political statements are being reported extensively in North Korea's government-controlled press. The North Korean regime is no doubt among the foreign supporters who want him to win this year's election.”

“Titanic irresponsibility: Part II
Thomas Sowell
April 14, 2004

Attacks on American and other troops and civilians in Iraq are not based on any illusion that terrorist acts and guerrilla warfare can defeat our military forces there. But the strength of a chain is that of its weakest link -- and the weakest link in American security is in the United States itself. It is the political link.

For those old enough to remember the Vietnam war, this is another version of the Communist "Tet offensive" that marked the turning point in that war. During the holiday period known in Vietnam as Tet, the Communists launched spectacular attacks within South Vietnam, catching American and South Vietnamese forces by surprise -- and shocking American public opinion.
President Lyndon Johnson's administration had for years painted such an optimistic picture of the war that many Americans were shocked that the Communists still had enough strength left to launch such widespread and coordinated attacks. The Tet offensive was such a blow to the administration's credibility during an election year that President Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election.

Support for the war eroded and demands that we get out reached a crescendo. The irony in all this is that the Communist insurgents were beaten decisively during the Tet offensive. But what they lost in battle in Vietnam the Communists won in the American media and in public opinion shaped by the media.

In later years, after the Communists were firmly in power in Vietnam, they admitted that the Tet offensive was a military disaster for them. In a 1995 interview in the Wall Street Journal, a Communist official stated frankly that the key to their victory was the American home front, and that they were encouraged to fight on by all the anti-war demonstrations in the United States.

For much of the American media, their role in turning public opinion against the Vietnam war was among their proudest achievements. For our enemies, Vietnam provided a formula for defeating Americans politically at home when they could not be defeated militarily on the battlefield. Iraqi terrorists are already saying that they will create another Vietnam.

Fortunately, not all of the media today is in Vietnam nostalgia mode. Nor have our leaders repeated all the mistakes of Vietnam.

First and foremost, the Bush administration has never tried to tell us that the war on terrorism would be either quick or easy. On the contrary, the President announced back in 2001 that the war on terrorism was going to be a long and hard war.

Most of us at the time would probably not have believed that we could have gone this long without another and perhaps more catastrophic terrorist attack on the United States. Do you remember how every symbolic occasion -- the World Series, Christmas, New Year's Eve, the Super Bowl -- brought widespread fears that this could be when the terrorists would strike us again?

Yet our respite from terrorist attack has seldom brought even a grudging acknowledgement that perhaps the government's anti-terrorism policies and activities might deserve some credit, instead of the constant barrage of media and political criticism and carping.

Make no mistake, a new and more terrible terrorist attack could happen here at any time -- especially now that Spain has shown how easy it is to panic politicians. But the fact that our enemies see our politics as the weakest link in the chain of American national security means that we need to recognize that as well.

John F. Kennedy said it all: "We dare not tempt them with weakness." He went to the brink of nuclear war with that philosophy during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 -- and the public supported him.

That is why the Soviets backed down. Had we been bickering among ourselves, the outcome could have been very different.

Today as well, weakness is our greatest danger -- whether that weakness takes the form of wishful thinking about the United Nations or other soft options. Politicians who are too irresponsible to recognize that our deadly enemies -- whether in Iraq or North Korea -- are listening to their every word cannot be trusted with the power to shape the future of this nation.”

“Crunch Time in Washington
The Iraq war is winnable, but not by the U.N.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

A week of counterattacks by the U.S. military has improved security in Iraq, but we wish we could say the same about judgment in Washington. All sorts of people are drawing the wrong lessons from the surge of violence, enough so that the war could still be won on the ground in Iraq but lost in Georgetown and the East Side of Manhattan.

The most important lesson of the past 10 days is that the assaults in Sunni Fallujah and parts of the Shiite south do not represent a broad national uprising against the coalition. If they ever do--if most Iraqis really don't want us there--then the U.S. would have no choice but to leave. But most Shiites haven't joined Moqtada al-Sadr's call for revolt, and his Mahdi Army has melted away at the sight of U.S. forces. The Fallujah insurgents, meanwhile, are the same Baathist elements who want to restore the old regime that most Iraqis were glad to be rid of. In short, the Iraq war remains winnable, notwithstanding the quagmire chorus that has once again broken out in Washington.

The latest old advice, including from John Kerry, is to turn it all over to the United Nations. It's hard to know what specifically proponents mean by this, since the current U.N. presence in Baghdad consists only of political envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. If Mr. Brahimi can serve as an honest broker among Iraqi factions, then he might do some good. Then again, Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post reports that he began a meeting with the Iraqi Governing Council by declaring that he came "as a brother Arab"--in the presence of two Kurds and a Turkoman member.

A broader U.N. mission fled Iraq the first time it was attacked last year, and only yesterday Kofi Annan ruled out sending "a large U.N. team" for the "foreseeable future" for security reasons. That means U.S. soldiers would still do the fighting, albeit under U.N. command. Pakistani U.N. troops sat in their barracks while Army Rangers took casualties in Mogadishu, and Dutch U.N. soldiers let the Serbs drag Bosnian men off to their deaths in the "safe" zone they controlled in former Yugoslavia. The last thing U.S. military officers need is to have their plans for controlling Fallujah overruled by some U.N. political actor answerable to the French and Russians.

It's also far from clear that Iraqis would welcome control by the same U.N. that administered the corrupt Oil for Food program that enriched Saddam Hussein. If the price of U.N. involvement is to sweep the Oil for Food scandal under the carpet, then Iraqis would be justifiably furious.

Another Washington mistake is to see the past week as a failure of "Iraqification." We said long before the war that the U.S. should train and supply Iraqis opposed to Saddam, and the delay in doing that has cost us. But the Iraq Civil Defense Corps was never supposed to be a front-line force; it was formed to assist coalition troops with intelligence and other duties. The failure of one of its brigades to deploy to Fallujah is a problem that needs to be addressed at the command level, but other units have been fighting bravely. The number of pro-coalition Iraqis killed in action since September has been roughly equal to the number of Americans.

The spin in recent days that no Iraqis are willing to fight in their own cause is simply false. And some of the people now questioning the loyalty of the ICDC are the same folks who said it was a mistake to disband an Iraqi army loyal to Saddam. General John Abizaid's decision to reappoint some former Iraqi officers to ICDC leadership posts may help, but only if the choices are made carefully enough to exclude the worst Baath elements. De-Baathification was not a mistake as far as the Shiites are concerned.





After 35 years of terror, and uncertain that they can depend on the U.S. in the long run, many Iraqis are also understandably wary of speaking up too loudly or too soon. More of them will begin to do so once there is more clarity about what is going to happen when sovereignty is transferred on June 30, and especially when elections are going to be held. One reason Mr. Sadr is able to exploit Shiite fears is because no one knows when or whether there will ever be an election.
Coalition officials have been trying so hard to make sure that the Sunnis of Saddam's former strongholds feel wanted that they've risked alienating the Shiite majority. Uncertainty has only fed those fears. If even U.S. regent L. Paul Bremer can't explain what is going to happen after June 30, then no wonder Shiites who have lived in fear for decades are suspicious. More clarity about the political direction is now the most urgent need beyond security.

On the politics, by the way, the White House and Mr. Bremer would do well to look to America's own experience with federalism. One legitimate Iraqi fear is that they will be ruled again by an all-powerful central government in Baghdad. The coalition might find Iraqis in the provinces more amenable to political compromise if they control things that matter, such as having a direct claim on some Iraqi tax receipts or on U.S. reconstruction aid. It's an illusion to think, as some in the CIA and coalition headquarters still do, that the way to solve the Sunni problem is by rekindling Iraqi nationalism through control in Baghdad. Moderate Sunnis are far more likely to come around to the new reality if they see that they will have some local control.

All of this is contingent on improving security, which means winning in the Sunni Triangle and against Mr. Sadr. U.S. forces clearly have the power to do so, if they are given the authority. The Marines in Fallujah were making great progress before the recent cease-fire, rolling up terror safehouses, bomb factories and foreign fighters. Allowing a respite at the request of the Iraqi Governing Council may make sense if it wins more Iraqi support for the effort, but the reality is that the remnants of the Fedayeen and Saddam's Mukhabarat have to be killed or caught. The last thing they want is a free Iraq.





Unlike many in Washington in the past week, President Bush does not seem to be panicking. One thing we wish he'd do better is explain the realities in Iraq, and his strategy for victory, as he no doubt did at the press conference scheduled for last night after our deadline. If the November election is a referendum on Iraq, then the one sure way for Mr. Bush to lose would be to dodge the subject. Especially with the chattering classes wringing their hands or counseling retreat, Mr. Bush needs to help Americans understand why failure cannot be an option.”

“Strat, keep your damn facts to your self. We're only interested in patisan dogma round these parts! LOL!”

“Strat, brother, fellow man, post maybe the opening paragraph as a teaser and the link to the rest. You're killing me with the Tolstoy-ish cut and pastes.”

“Which is exactly why I have him on ignore.

I have a system. I click on one of his messages every so often, and if it's a long cut and paste, I close it and don't open another for the rest of the thread. It shortens the thread, and ups the value of the posts considerably.”