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

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (171392)	9/28/2005 10:58:25 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

National Guard sent to protect oil, not people ______________________________________________ By STACY BANNERMAN GUEST COLUMNIST Seattle Post-Intelligencer Tuesday, September 27, 2005 Hurricane Katrina blew apart President Bush's rickety arguments about how invading Iraq would make us safe. We don't know Hurricane Katrina's death toll, or how many Americans might have lived had the thousands of National Guard troops trained to help in the wake of hurricanes and floods not been protecting oil in the desert. But we know 35 percent of Louisiana's and 40 percent of Mississippi's National Guard troops were in Iraq while their towns were leveled. National Guard officers repeatedly had warned officials about the catastrophic impact of having so many Guardsmen deployed in the event of a major natural disaster. More soldiers and equipment are now stateside. But hundreds of high-water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators the Gulf Coast desperately needs remain overseas. Not only Gulf Coast residents are in jeopardy; the Iraq war endangers the nation. More than a third of the U.S. soldiers based in Iraq belong to the Reserves or National Guard. Weekend warriors intended to supplement full-time active duty troops now fight for 14 months on average. But most are still treated like part-timers, and prepped and outfitted for combat accordingly. New equipment goes to the Army while Guardsmen and Reservists get hand-me-downs. This bodes badly for part-time soldiers who have become a major fighting force in Iraq. August was the deadliest month for citizen soldiers. Five Pennsylvania Guardsmen died when the second-class humvee they were in was blown up. They had requested permission to use some of the 12 brand new, fully up-armored vehicles issued to a nearby active duty unit. The request was denied. The trucks stood idle when the Guardsmen died. A total of 46 National Guard and Reserve soldiers were killed in August, more than half the 83 troop deaths. The disproportionately high -- and rising -- casualty rates of citizen soldiers are part of a trend. Pentagon statistics released at the end of 2004 showed losses sustained by Army National Guard soldiers in Iraq were 35 percent higher than that of regular enlisted. The elevated mortality rate of citizen soldiers is unparalleled. Of the 58,209 U.S. deaths in Vietnam, 94 were Guardsmen, and none were killed in the Persian Gulf War, USA Today has reported. Long, hazardous duty is one reason why Army National Guard and Army Reserve recruitment numbers are off by 23 percent and 20 percent, respectively. In the first half of 2005, the Seattle Army Reserve office missed its target of about 100 recruits by 75 percent. Oregon recruitment is down 40 percent. Several battalions have lost more than half their members. One Reserve unit saw 70 percent of its members leave within a few months of coming home. Half the soldiers leaving active duty service have traditionally joined the Guard, but since that likely means a quick trip back to Iraq, the number has dropped to about 35 percent. With so many first responders in Iraq, we have fewer first responders -- fire, police and emergency medical technicians -- in our communities. While the Guard and Reserve are particularly hard hit, our entire country is suffering from the Iraq war. Rep. Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., recently noted that more than 16,000 U.S. troops have been killed or wounded in Iraq, and that the government has spent more than $200 billion on the war so far, saying, "The war has been a tremendous failure by both measures." He was announcing his support for legislation to require that U.S. troops begin their withdrawal from Iraq by October 2006. It's time we add Homeland Security to the growing list of casualties of the war in Iraq. _______________________________________ Stacy Bannerman is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). Her book, "When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Citizen Soldiers and the Families Left Behind," will be released by Continuum Publishing in 2006. Her husband deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard 81st Brigade in March 2004 and returned home earlier this year. seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (171392)	9/28/2005 11:12:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Iraq War Winners: Al-Qaeda, Iran and Military Contractors ___________________________________________________________ By Paul Craig Roberts* CounterPunch.org Monday 26 September 2005 George W. Bush will go down in history as the president who fiddled while America lost its superpower status. Bush used deceit and hysteria to lead America into a war that is bleeding the US economically, militarily, and diplomatically. The war is being fought with hundreds of billions of dollars borrowed from foreigners. The war is bleeding the military of troops and commitments. The war has ended the US claim to moral leadership and exposed the US as a reckless and aggressive power. Focused on a concocted "war on terrorism," the Bush administration diverted money from the New Orleans levees to Iraq, with the consequence that the US now has a $100 billion rebuild bill on top of the war bill. The US is so short of troops that neoconservatives are advocating the use of foreign mercenaries paid with US citizenship. US efforts to isolate Iran have been blocked by Russia and China, nuclear powers that Bush cannot bully. The Iraqi war has three beneficiaries: (1) al Qaeda, (2) Iran and (3) US war industries and Bush-Cheney cronies who receive no-bid contracts. Everyone else is a loser. The war has bestowed on al Qaeda recruits, prestige, and a training ground. The war has allied Iran with Iraq's Shi'ite majority. The war has brought soaring profits to the military industries and the firms with reconstruction contracts at the expense of 20,000 US military casualties and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties. The Republican Party is a loser, because its hidebound support for the war is isolating the party from public opinion. The Democratic Party is a loser, because its cowardly acquiescence in a war that is opposed by the majority of its members is making the party irrelevant. The latest polls show that a majority of Americans believe the US cannot win against the Iraq insurgency. The majority support withdrawal and the redirection of war spending to rebuilding New Orleans. Despite the clarity of the public's wishes, the Republican Party continues to support the unpopular war. With the exceptions of Reps. Cynthia McKinney and John Conyers, Democrats fled the scene of the Sept. 24 antiwar rally in Washington DC. The cynical Democrats are apparently owned by the same interest groups that own the Republicans and are refusing the mantle of majority party that the electorate is offering to the party that will end the war. The Bush administration is churning out red ink in excess of $1 trillion annually. The federal budget deficit is approaching $500 billion. The US trade deficit is approaching $700 billion. The budget deficit is being financed by foreigners, primarily Asians who now hold enough US government debt to exercise power over US interest rates and the value of the dollar whenever they decide to use the power that Bush has placed in their hands. The trade deficit is being financed by turning over the ownership of US assets and future income streams to foreigners, making Americans forever poorer from the loss of accumulated wealth. For the time being, China is willing to accumulate US assets as a way of taking over our consumer markets, attracting US manufacturing industry with cheap labor subsidized by artificial currency values, and gaining our technology. China's strategy is to over-value the US dollar in order to encourage the transfer of US economic capabilities to China. China's strategy gives artificial value to the dollar and keeps US interest rates at an artificial low. The values of US stocks, bonds, and real estate depend on the support that Asians' economic strategies provide the dollar and US interest rates. As Asia achieves its goal of preeminence in manufacturing, innovation, and product development, the strategy will change. Once China completes its acquisition of US capabilities, it will no longer have a reason to support the dollar. When the dollar goes, it will affect costs, profits, interest rates and living standards in dramatic ways. Costs and interest rates will soar, and profits, living standards, equity values, bond prices and real estate will plummet. These unpleasant events await only Asia's decision to curtail its support for US red ink. That will happen when this support no longer serves Asia's interest. When Asia pulls the plug on the dollar, the US government will find that monetary and fiscal policy are powerless to offset the consequences. Compared to US budget and trade deficits, terrorists are a minor concern. The greatest danger that the US faces is the dollar's loss of reserve currency role. This would be an impoverishing event, one from which the US would not recover. An intelligent government sincerely concerned with homeland security would find a way to halt the global labor arbitrage that is stripping the American economy of high value-added jobs and manufacturing capability, thereby causing the US trade deficit to explode. The loss of tax base that results when US companies outsource jobs and relocate production abroad makes it ever more difficult to balance a budget strained by war, natural disasters, and demographic impact on Social Security and Medicare. Global labor arbitrage is rapidly dismantling the ladders of upward mobility and thereby endangering American political stability. This threat is far greater than any Osama bin Laden can mount. Time is running out for Republicans and Democrats to escape from the distraction of a pointless war and to focus on the real threats that endanger the United States of America. _________________________________________ *Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. ------- truthout.org

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (171392)	9/28/2005 12:29:09 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

Defeat Main Entry: 1de·feat Pronunciation: di-'fEt, dE- Function: transitive verb Etymology: Middle English deffeten, from Middle French deffait,... 1 obsolete : DESTROY 2 a : NULLIFY <defeat an estate> b : FRUSTRATE 2a(1) <defeat a hope> In other words, your understanding of "Defeat" to mean "Destroy" has been obsolete and Vietnam did in fact defeat US just as the insurgents are defeating US (see the common meaning per #2). Intuitively this should be obvious to anyone that decisions are not made in vacuum. The "decision" to leave Vietnam had much more to do with their resistance than with some president "choosing" to leave, just as when we leave Iraq it will be because they are not greeting us with flowers and candy and have been willing to blow themselves up just to take a piece of us with them. In fact, you could kill every Iraqi on earth and if they still refuse to bow to the hyper power, you have still not defeated them; you have merely taken over their land by force.