Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (42072)	4/10/2004 12:20:08 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

US commander will not take blame for unrest By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 09/04/2004) America's top commander in Iraq has warned Washington that he will not be "the fall guy" if violence in the country worsens, it emerged yesterday, as word leaked out that US generals are "outraged" by their lack of soldiers. America's generals consider current troop strengths of 130,000 in Iraq inadequate, reported the columnist Robert Novak, a doyen of the old-school Right in Washington. Iraqi militants fire on US marines during clashes in Fallujah Gen John Abizaid, commander of Central Command, told his political masters earlier this week that he would ask for reinforcements if requested by the generals under him. His words overrode months of public assurances from the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other civilian chiefs that more troops are not necessary. As violence flared across the Sunni triangle and the Shia-dominated south of Iraq on Wednesday, Mr Rumsfeld indicated that troop numbers would be bolstered at least temporarily, by leaving in place units that had been earmarked to return home as part of troop rotation, while still sending replacements. But officers who will not speak out in public let it be known that major reinforcements might be impossible to find. US forces are so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that "there are simply no large units available and suitable for assignment", Novak wrote in his column in The Washington Post. US marines evacuate an injured comrade in Fallujah The leaks have revived memories of the bitter debate that raged in Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, as uniformed chiefs clashed with Mr Rumsfeld and his aides, who predicted that US forces would be welcomed as "liberators", allowing troop numbers to be reduced rapidly. Relations between the uniformed military and the Pentagon's civilian chiefs are currently worse than at any time in living memory, Novak wrote, citing a former high-ranking national security official who served in previous Republican administrations. Many still in uniform bitterly recall the public dressing-down earned by the then army chief of staff, Gen Eric Shinseki, when he told Congress a month before the invasion, in February 2003, that "several hundred thousand troops" might be needed to occupy Iraq. That estimate was slapped down as "wildly off the mark" by the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. Thomas White, the army secretary and a former general himself, publicly backed Gen Shinseki. Mr White was sacked shortly afterwards by Mr Rumsfeld. A new account of the war, In the Company of Soldiers, reveals that in May 2003 Pentagon planners "predicted that US troop levels would be down to 30,000 by late summer [of 2003]". Underlining the mood of crisis, private security contractors in Iraq - many of them US and British military veterans - have abruptly dropped professional rivalries and begun sharing information and even resources, creating what US officials called the largest private army in the world. Such co-operation was born out of unhappy necessity, a source at one of the leading security companies said, criticising the Pentagon and occupation officials for failing to share intelligence on threats with guards they had hired to protect everything from power stations to the chief US administrator, Paul Bremer. Information sharing is being made easier by the close ties in the special forces community, where many British, US and other western military commandos have known each other for years. "The unfortunate thing is it had to happen this way," said the industry source. "This informal communication is necessitated by lack of communications and intelligence sharing between the Pentagon, Coalition Provisional Authority and private security." A South African working for a British security firm, Hart Group, was killed on Tuesday in the town of Kut, after coalition forces from Ukraine failed to respond to repeated pleas for help from a small group of besieged guards. Asked if private security firms were working together because they trusted each other more than some coalition militaries, the industry source declined to comment, saying: "Let's not go there." telegraph.co.uk

To: lurqer who wrote (42072)	4/10/2004 12:20:44 AM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

For those that believe that Iraq has made the US safer, let's see how many mujahideen we can create. In Mideast, Anger and Solidarity Arabs Praise Iraqi Insurgents, Condemn U.S. Occupation Scott Wilson AMMAN, Jordan, April 9 -- The U.S. military campaign across Iraq this week infuriated Arabs in the region and brought strident calls for Muslim solidarity against the American-led occupation. Throughout the week, Arabic-language television networks have repeatedly aired images of U.S. tanks rumbling through Fallujah, a mosque damaged by a U.S. bomb and the corpses of Iraqis killed in the heaviest fighting in almost a year. Arab commentators have compared the U.S. offensive to Israel's tactics against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reinforcing long-standing Arab fears that the United States has no intention of leaving the region. Leading Arab newspapers and clerics have praised Iraqi insurgents and the emerging anti-U.S. alliance among Sunni and Shiite Muslims as a turning point in the fight against the occupation. One Egyptian opposition newspaper, Al-Ahali, declared on its front page that Fallujah -- a city west of Baghdad that has been at the center of resistance to the occupation -- has secured a vaunted place in Islamic history for its stand against U.S. troops. "How will the Americans explain to the world the joint Shiite-Sunni intifada?" journalist Abdel Hady Abu Taleb wrote in Egypt's state-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper. "Ever since the fall of Baghdad a year ago, the Americans have been making one excuse after another to explain the escalation of the resistance." In small demonstrations Friday in several capitals, protesters called for their governments to denounce the U.S. military tactics, which Arab leaders have so far declined to do. "This comes on top of a broad unhappiness with Arab governments from Morocco to Iraq," said Kamel Abu Jaber, a former Jordanian foreign minister. "It seems like these governments are living in one reality and the people in another." In Sunni-majority countries such as Jordan, many have watched with trepidation as Iraq's Shiite majority has garnered new political power under the U.S. occupation. But many Sunnis appear now to be setting aside fears of a Shiite resurgence, at least for the moment, to express support for a widening anti-occupation resistance. In the Jordanian capital, Muslim clerics underscored Sunni-Shiite solidarity during Friday prayers on the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. "After a year of the occupation of Iraq where are we? Where are the Arab rulers?" Ibrahim Zaid, a Sunni cleric, told several hundred people who gathered here in a parking lot in support of the Iraqi uprising. "Now there is Fallujah, living alone. There are heroes calling and no one hears them, no one sees them," Zaid told the crowd. "We feel anger and grief," said Khaldoun Bourno, 30, a Sunni who is general secretary of the Agronomist and Engineers Association in Jordan. "But this anger will not appear on the surface. Instead it will make many martyrs and lead to more and more demonstrations." In Beirut, several Islamic parties demonstrated Friday against the violence in Iraq. But they drew little notice outside the Palestinian refugee camps and southern Beirut neighborhoods where Islamic organizations hold sway. Writing on the front page of Beirut's An-Nahar newspaper, columnist Sahar Baasiri said U.S. military operations in Iraq "humiliate" Arabs, fueling resentment that helps explain the mutilation in Fallujah last week of four U.S. government contractors, which Baasiri condemned. "It is not enough for the White House to blame the terrorists and remnants of the Saddam regime for the violence in Fallujah," she wrote. The frustrations have not been confined to the poor or ardently anti-American segments of the Arab population. Middle-class professionals, some of them already opposed to U.S. policy in the region because of its support for Israel, are also expressing solidarity with the Iraqi insurgents. "What's so sad is that Arabs are so used to these American actions that nothing seems to shock us anymore" said Lamia Mansour, 34, a marketing consultant in Cairo. "You can't answer back with logic because there is no logic to what the U.S. is doing and you can't fight back because who can fight the tyranny of the Americans?" washingtonpost.com lurqer

To: lurqer who wrote (42072)	4/10/2004 7:02:25 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

Re DeLay ..of THE ('DETERMINED') PDB.......... Cant use Dan White's Twinkie Defense... on the HIStory Lesson..(not yet anyway) twinkiesproject.com So ...how bout a 21st Century gal..who can fill Rosemary's tired and dusty shoes....... dorsai.org

To: lurqer who wrote (42072)	4/10/2004 7:42:11 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

French seize Niger artefacts French customs officials say they have seized a large number of prehistoric artefacts they believe were pillaged from archaeological sites in Niger. The items were found in the baggage of a passenger who arrived on a flight from Niger's capital, Niamey, at the end of last month. They included more than 5,000 stone arrowheads and 90 carved stone artefacts, dating back 5,000 years. Officials said the items appeared in good condition. They had been stuffed into plastic bags and weighed more than 23kg (50lbs). The passenger, a 42-year-old man from Mali, initially told customs officials at Roissy airport outside Paris that the items were found in the desert in Niger. He said he had planned to sell them in the United States, but later said he was going to sell them in France. Such items were often "uncovered by sand storms after being hidden for thousands of years, which would explain their excellent state", a French Culture Ministry official said.