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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (117724)10/26/2003 1:46:49 AM
From: Jacob Snyder  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500
 
I find it very encouraging, that core Bush team members (Pipes, Rumsfeld), are stepping back and re-evaluating.

Pipes is saying (and I'm very surprised and gratified to hear it, from someone like him) the same things I've been saying for a long time:

1. there is no chance of imposing a settlement by force on Iraq.
2. any non-Muslim army that tries to rule any Muslim population, anywhere, will face an endless war, and eventually be defeated. The only armies that can pacify Muslim populations are Muslim armies.
3. we need to start listening to the French, and following their good advice
4. time is not on our side. The longer we try to control the ground, the more armed resistance we will provoke.



To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (117724)10/26/2003 1:50:52 AM
From: KLP  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500
 
Breaking News...Rockets Hit Baghdad Hotel Where Wolfowitz Staying
Sun October 26, 2003 12:58 AM ET

[Note: Evidently Wolfowitz is not injured...]

reuters.com

By Carol Giacomo
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Anti-American guerrillas attacked the Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying on Sunday with a barrage of rockets, but the No. 2 Pentagon official survived the blasts unharmed, U.S. officials said.

"We have unconfirmed reports of 15 wounded," said a military official. There are no reports of deaths. At least two wounded people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers, said a Reuters journalist at the Rashid Hotel, where the attack occurred at about 6 a.m. local time (11 p.m. EDT Saturday).

Wolfowitz was unharmed and led away by security forces, according to a U.S. defense official at the scene. Witnesses said Wolfowitz, a major force behind the Iraq war, looked composed.

Wolfowitz and senior aides were staying on the 12th floor when the rockets slammed into the hotel several floors below.

Members of his party, who had been dressing ahead of a breakfast meeting on electricity, calmly descended a stairwell past thickening smoke and blood stains. About 200 people, including his party, journalists and U.S. civilian contractors, gathered in the lobby before exiting the building.

"Based on what we have heard in security briefings it may have been that someone set these things up last night and then detonated them remotely," a senior defense official told reporters at the scene.

The official, who saw the rockets slam into the hotel from his room window, predicted there would probably be no more attacks on the party.

"That will have been the event for the day," he said.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Sgt. Danny Martin, said six to eight rockets hit the Rashid Hotel on the west side of the building.

Wolfowitz was paying his second visit to Iraq in three months and had stressed the need to speed up the formation of a new Iraqi army, police force, border guard and civil defense corps.

It was not clear if the attack would prompt Wolfowitz to cut short his trip. He was due to leave Iraq for Washington late Sunday night.

The Rashid hotel is part of a compound on the west bank of the Tigris river used by the U.S.-led administration.

It is in a fortified complex that includes palaces built by former leader Saddam Hussein and his elite troops.

Three rockets fired at the hotel by guerrillas on Sept. 27 hit the building but no one was wounded.



To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (117724)10/26/2003 8:11:05 AM
From: Chas.  Respond to of 281500
 
concerned Iraqi citizens have to form militant forces and groups to go after and eliminate the former Republican guard fighters, the radical Islamic terrorists(from neighboring countries) and others that would bring down their New Iraq.
I believe that is the goal of US forces and behind the scenes planning.......

Until this happens it will continue to be a festering boil for all concerned.