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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (117861)	10/27/2003 11:30:41 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

EU polls give cold comfort to US on Iraq Mon Oct 27, 2:21 PM ET By Tobias Buck in Brussels The vast majority of Europeans remain opposed to US military intervention in Iraq (news - web sites), and few want Washington to be in charge of rebuilding the country, according to opinion polls throughout the European Union. The survey of polls by Eurobarometer found that 68 per cent of those surveyed said military intervention in Iraq had not been justified, against 29 per cent who said the US was right to lead the march on Baghdad. Fifty-eight per cent of those asked said the United Nations (news - web sites) should manage the rebuilding of Iraq, against only 18 per cent who said Washington should remain in charge. story.news.yahoo.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (117861)	10/28/2003 6:19:44 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, Debka is tiresome when it goes in this direction: To achieve this clockwork precision, the deadly series must have been planned in detail for months How about a couple of weeks or a few days? Getting the bombers to the destination meant getting them up and out soon enough and the targets carefully chosen with the help of expert intelligence The al Rashid hotel and some police stations as targets requires expert intelligence? I suppose it does, in a sense - you have to send a guy over to suss it out and perhaps have somebody in the hotel. Wolfowitz's presence in Baghdad was noted by every medium in the free and unfree world. which the Americans clearly lack The US guy doesn't see it quite the same way: cnsnews.com US successes force insurgents to change tactics Recent intelligence reports indicate that the amounts of money offered to people willing to conduct attacks against U.S. forces has gone up, suggesting the elements coordinating the attacks are running out of people, Odierno said. In recent months, the price for a successful attack on U.S. forces has increased from about $500 to between $3,000 and $5,000, Odierno said. "We also believe that the price to convince people to move weapons around or to conduct any type of operation has gone up significantly," he said. Recent successes by U.S. forces have depleted the pool of people willing to come forward, Odierno said. Operations against U.S. forces are becoming so expensive that the insurgents are being forced to change their techniques and go after soft civilian targets, such as the United Nations and the Red Cross, he added. ... Odierno said the quality of intelligence received by the coalition forces is steadily improving. The number of tips received "is probably 10 or 20-fold more than when we first started," he said. "Even more importantly, it's more accurate human information. In fact our success rate is about 90 percent now accurate, where in the beginning it was 40 to 50 percent," he said. Odierno acknowledged there are threats to Iraqis who come forward with information. However, "What's amazing to me is they continue to come forward, even after this intimidation has occurred, because they want to see Iraq move forward and they're very courageous people doing this." About 95 percent of the forces opposed to the U.S. presence are former regime loyalists, Odierno estimated. A small number - from 2 to 5 percent - are foreign fighters. "We've only really picked up a few of those - a couple from Syria, some Wahabists from other countries, but that's really been it. We've not seen a large influx of foreign fighters thus far," he said. Actually, the CNS article is quite interesting, I'll post it separately.