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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (564510)	4/14/2004 12:34:44 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 769670

U.S. Tactics Condemned by British Officers By Sean Rayment Telegrah UK Sunday 11 April 2004 Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate. One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command. The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans". Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful. "The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them." The phrase untermenschen - literally "under-people" - was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, Slaves and gipsies. Although no formal complaints have as yet been made to their American counterparts, the officer said the British Government was aware of its commanders' "concerns and fears". The officer explained that, under British military rules of war, British troops would never be given clearance to carry out attacks similar to those being conducted by the US military, in which helicopter gunships have been used to fire on targets in urban areas. British rules of engagement only allow troops to open fire when attacked, using the minimum force necessary and only at identified targets. The American approach was markedly different: "When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area. "They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers. "The British response in Iraq has been much softer. During and after the war the British set about trying to win the confidence of the local population. There have been problems, it hasn't been easy but on the whole it was succeeding." The officer believed that America had now lost the military initiative in Iraq, and it could only be regained with carefully planned, precision attacks against the "terrorists". "The US will have to abandon the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach - it has failed," he said. "They need to stop viewing every Iraqi, every Arab as the enemy and attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people. "Our objective is to create a stable, democratic and safe Iraq. That's achievable but not in the short term. It is going to take up to 10 years." CC

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (564510)	4/14/2004 6:55:15 PM
From: DizzyG	Respond to of 769670

Apparently, Kenneth... You missed this. Gorelick's conflict Linda Chavez April 14, 2004 Attorney General John Ashcroft came out swinging in testimony before the 9-11 Commission on Tuesday. "In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required," he said. "The 1995 Guidelines and the procedures developed around them imposed draconian barriers to communications between the law enforcement and intelligence communities. The wall left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents. In 1995, the Justice Department designed a system destined to fail." But Ashcroft's bombshell wasn't his description of the Clinton Administration's policies, which have been discussed by previous witnesses. "Somebody built this wall," Ashcroft told the commissioners, and then went on to accuse one of the commission's own. "The basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum entitled 'Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations,'" said Ashcroft. "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this Commission." Ashcroft was referring to Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration. From the beginning, Gorelick's appointment to the 9/11 Commission was problematic. She served not only as Attorney General Janet Reno's deputy but also as general counsel at the Department of Defense, jobs which put her at the heart of the Clinton Administration's anti-terrorism efforts. Her actions, as well as those of her superiors, are among the subjects this commission is tasked to review. How can she be expected to be impartial when it comes to evaluating her superiors, much less herself? The memo Gorelick wrote has now been declassified and offers a window into the role she played in obstructing effective intelligence gathering and sharing during the Clinton Administration. The memo grew out of the Justice Department's prosecution of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center -- the act that apparently gave Osama bin Laden the idea to try again in 2001. "During the course of those investigations," wrote Gorelick in 1995, "significant counterintelligence information has been developed related to the activities and plans of agents of foreign powers operating in this country and overseas, including previously unknown connections between separate terrorist groups." But Gorelick wanted to make sure that the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. "(W)e believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation." The problem, of course, is that the inability to share information is precisely what hampered federal agents in tracking down the 9-11 hijackers. As Attorney General Ashcroft testified, this artificial wall impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who was arrested prior to the 9-11 attack, as well as Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, both of whom were identified by the CIA as suspected terrorists possibly in the United States prior to their participation in those terrible attacks. "Because of the wall, FBI Headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join in the hunt for the suspected terrorists," Ashcroft told the commission. "At the time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote Headquarters," said Ashcroft, "quote, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why . . .'" Jamie Gorelick should step down from the commission at once. If she fails to do so on her own, her fellow commissioners should ask her to step aside. Her role as the architect of a policy that hampered the work of federal agents to track down suspected terrorists makes her unfit to pass judgment on the alleged failures of others. Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Townhall.com member organization. townhall.com This really doesn't look too good, does it Kenneth? Diz-