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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (18671)	6/24/2003 1:23:21 AM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

If China invaded the US to "liberate" the population and remove our WMD's would you resist? Or would you read some Chinese agustus gloop rant on the internet labeling you a thug for shooting at Chinese soldiers and do nothing cuz you wouldn't like to be called a thug by someone in China?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (18671)	6/24/2003 2:04:52 AM
From: Doug R	Respond to of 21614

BASRA, Iraq, April 12 Tameemi made clear he has little love for the British who named him mayor. "They said they are going to free Iraq," he said, "but they are an occupying force and we all know that. The British should treat the Iraqis well or they'll start a revolution like in 1920" June 22, 2003 5:07 PM The Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, has criticised the occupation of Iraq by coalition forces, dubbing it counter-productive to achieving democracy in the region. Addressing participants at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Jordan, the minister said occupying the country could only lead to more violent resistance. Thursday June 19, 2003 Armed Opposition to the U.S. Occupation of Iraq Could Signal a Protracted Guerilla War With growing attention being focused on the Bush administration's failure to locate Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction," the president's principal justification for war, Congress and the media are beginning to ask some tough questions about the possible exaggeration or manipulation of information gathered by intelligence agencies. Against this backdrop, armed resistance to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq is becoming more deadly with each passing day. Mon, May. 19, 2003 Shiites protest U.S. occupation of Iraq April 17, 2003 the millions of Iraqis here are ordered to stay in their homes from dusk to dawn. Lockdown. It's a form of imprisonment. In their own country. Written by the command of the 1st US Marine Division, it's a curfew in all but name. "If I was an Iraqi and I read that," an Arab woman shouted at me, "I would become a suicide bomber." And all across Baghdad you hear the same thing, from Shia Muslim clerics to Sunni businessmen, that the Americans have come only for oil, and that soon - very soon - a guerrilla resistance must start. No doubt the Americans will claim that these attacks are "remnants" of Saddam's regime or "criminal elements". But that will not be the case. Marine officers in Baghdad were holding talks yesterday with a Shia militant cleric from Najaf to avert an outbreak of fighting around the holy city. I met the prelate before the negotiations began and he told me that "history is being repeated". He was talking of the British invasion of Iraq in 1917, which ended in disaster for the British.

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (18671)	6/24/2003 3:16:12 AM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

Monday, June 23, 2003 A Sad Story According to an Iraqi witness, last week an American soldier at a propane tank got into an argument with an Iraqi woman, took her propane tank away from her and tossed it on the ground, and gave her a hard shove. An Iraqi man driving by saw this, stopped his car, got out and walked back to the two American soldiers there, shot them both with a pistol and then left in his car. He killed one and wounded the second. If the Iraqi witness is telling the truth, this was not a drive-by shooting, as the American military described it. Nor was it an organized attack by a supporter of Saddam Hussein. It appears to be just an Iraqi man who got ticked off when he saw an Iraqi woman being abused by a foreign soldier. This is both sad and revealing. It's sad because these young American soldiers are not trained to occupy a foreign country. Their morale is low. The temperature is hot. And we can well imagine a young American losing his temper when some lady is screaming at him in a foreign language. What he did should not have caused his death. On the other hand, it is revealing to understand that ordinary Iraqis are getting angry at the American occupation. A sense of honor is highly important in the Arab world, and this young man must have thought that he was honor-bound to avenge the affront of a fellow citizen and a woman by a foreigner. The American administration in Baghdad is trying to depict all attacks on Americans as the work of remnants of hard-core supporters of Saddam Hussein. The administration has begun to repeat the story, first floated by an Iraqi exile leader, that Saddam is offering a bounty for people to kill Americans. I doubt that is true. Some of the attacks are certainly by Saddam supporters, but we will be making a big mistake if we deny that our occupation by itself is provoking some of these attacks. The lot of an occupier is not an easy one. First of all, he is a foreigner who conquered the country. This will breed some resentment even among people who hated Saddam Hussein. Second, he is torn between the need for his own security and the need to win over the people. Third, practically everything the Iraqis are demanding is not in the power of the individual soldier to give them. A GI can't help it if the big shots in the palace headquarters are dragging their feet, but it's the GI, not the big shots, who is exposed to the Iraqi people. Every time our soldiers fire into a crowd, every time they kick down a door in the middle of the night and start jerking people around, they will breed bitter resentment. Some of our soldiers recently killed four young Iraqis who were just firing into the air to celebrate a wedding. It's a custom in that part of the world. T.E. Lawrence called them joy-shots. It's also a custom in that part of the world that every wrong must be avenged. But our soldiers aren't given courses in Arab culture, and they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later. Any man who intended to come home in one piece would have to adopt the same practice. And that's the tragedy of it all. The people on both sides are doing what they believe they have to do, and that is leading inexorably to a greater conflict. Several thoughtful Iraqis have warned us that the longer we stay, the greater the potential for trouble. That's no doubt true. The Bush administration did a poor job of planning for the end of the war. Unless we get lucky, we are very likely to lose the peace.

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (18671)	6/24/2003 4:06:20 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

U.S. IS AN ILLEGAL OCCUPATION FORCE Re: Or is it your contention that we're there illegally and thus we're fair game? That's exactly the way the entire world sees it. Except you and the Faux New deception crew apparently, and I think they know they are liars. And the hits just keep on happening..... ********** truthout.org Iraqi Insurgents Target U.S. Army Patrol The Associated Press Monday 23 June 2003 RAMADI, Iraq -- Insurgents fired rocket propelled grenades at U.S. Army patrols in two western Iraqi towns -- the latest in an escalating series of attacks that included an ambush involving a 12-year-old girl with an assault rifle, the military said Monday. No one was injured in the grenade attacks in Khaldiyah and Habaniyah, according to the overnight intelligence report distributed to Army commanders. Military officials said they had no information about reports that an airstrike on a three-vehicle convoy fleeing Iraq near the Syrian border last Wednesday killed top officials in the government of former president Saddam Hussein, perhaps including Saddam or his sons. The Washington Post quoted defense officials as saying that DNA tests were being conducted on the victims, and the Pentagon was closely following the results of the strike by a Special Operations forces AC-130 gunship. But they added that so far there was no evidence that either Saddam or one of his sons, Uday and Qusay, was hit. They are the top three on the U.S. list of most-wanted officials in Iraq, and coalition officials say the lack of evidence about their fate is fueling resistance to the occupation within Iraq. On Sunday, Iraq made its first foray back into the international oil market since the war, with the loading of one million barrels of crude onto a Turkish tanker at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. But sabotage and looting of the 600-mile pipeline from the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk to Ceyhan delayed the flow of freshly pumped oil -- the key to reconstructing an economy devastated by sanctions and war. Pumping was supposed to have begun Sunday. Information Radio, operated by the U.S.-led coalition, broadcast an appeal Monday for Iraqis to help police the pipeline and report the location of looted equipment. It said Iraq was losing $50 million a week needed for the nation's reconstruction due to delays caused by sabotage and theft. In Ramadi, a patrol of two tanks and four Humvees came under small arms fire on Sunday, and the patrol saw a young girl running away with an AK-47 assault rifle, said Capt. Burris Wollsieffer, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The bullets landed harmlessly in the dirt around the vehicles, he said on Monday. The troops followed the girl home and found the rifle wrapped in a red dress propped in a corner. Three men in the household were taken for interrogation, but the troops allowed the girl to remain at home when they learned her age. They also seized $1,500 in cash and $1,000 in Iraqi dinars, the officer said. None of the troops saw who fired the weapon, although they found no other suspects in the area other than the young girl. "It's just weird. It's totally unconventional," said Wollsieffer, when asked about the rising number of ambushes on his forces in Ramadi, a town where resistance to the occupation has been high. "It's guerrilla warfare." Two senior army officers met Monday with a prominent Islamic cleric, Abdullah al-Annay who preaches in two Ramadi mosques, to ask him to tone down his anti-American sermons, said the captain. "If he keeps this kind of speech going, they are just going to attack us more and more," said Wollsieffer, whose regiment has lost 10 men -- more than half the 18 men reported killed in combat -- since May 1 when major fighting was declared over. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment held a moving memorial service Sunday for Staff Sgt. William T. Latham, who died four days earlier in a Washington hospital from shrapnel wounds suffered during a May 19 raid at a suspected arms market. The latest casualty came Sunday, when a grenade exploded into a military vehicle south of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding another from the 1st Armored Division. In an interview published Monday in The Washington Post, Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani, a senior figure in Iraq's Shiite clerical hierarchy, demanded that the U.S. occupation forces allow Iraqis to rule themselves. "We feel great unease over their goals, and we see that it is necessary that they should make room for Iraqis to rule themselves by themselves without foreign intervention," al-Sistani said in written responses to questions from The Washington Post. The U.S. chief administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, acknowledged Sunday to industrialists and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Jordan that security is a prerequisite for putting Iraq on the road to recovery. Bremer insisted security was his "first priority," blaming continuing political violence and acts of sabotage on "a very small minority still trying to fight us" that is loyal to Saddam. He also suggested that Iraqi oil revenues could be distributed directly to the country's citizens, as Alaska does with its residents, or placed in a national trust fund to pay for pensions or other social programs. "Every individual Iraqi would come to understand that his or her stake in the country's economic success was there to see," Bremer said. Sunday's oil shipment marked a key first step. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, and all proceeds from sales are to go into a U.S.-controlled fund for use rebuilding battered infrastructure and an economy devastated by more than 12 years of U.N. economic sanctions. (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)