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

To: bentway who wrote (179788)	1/12/2006 11:25:38 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't think anyone blames the troops, except those individual soldiers who are actually at fault, so I fault the commanders and their commanders all the way up to President Loser who gives idiotic ideas to the troops about what they are fighting for. Iraq isn't the Armageddon of Christianity versus Islam, it's an oil-rich country in the middle of an oil-hungry world. However, to hear President Loser talk about it, Iraq is some kind of showdown for western civilization. It's utterly ridiculous and it makes young, unsophisticated, testosterone-laden kids act badly. It also makes older, unsophisticated testosterone-laden adults act badly as well. ========= I thought I heard Bremer start to whine about his reputation. Didn't Bush say repeatedly that no one called for more troops because he would have sent more? In Clintonian parsing speak, he will likely say (or McClellan will) that he meant the MILITARY guys and Bremer wasn't a military guy....so there, Bush still isn't ever at fault. U.S. Studied Bremer's '04 Bid for More Troops By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 13, 2006; Page A17 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he seriously considered a 2004 memo from L. Paul Bremer, then the senior U.S. official in Iraq, calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to quell the insurgency. But he said military commanders and service chiefs disagreed with Bremer. Bremer's memo, dated May 18, 2004, urged Rumsfeld to dispatch as many as two additional divisions -- or about 30,000 troops -- to Iraq, to meet myriad demands, including fighting insurgents, border control and securing convoy routes. The request, disclosed in Bremer's new book on his year-long tenure in Iraq, reflected what he said was his fear that the United States was becoming "the worst of all things -- an ineffective occupier."..... washingtonpost.com

To: bentway who wrote (179788)	1/13/2006 10:39:56 AM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Even the very stupid can learn.... The question is why they don't learn quicker! U.S. seeking Arab peacekeepers in Iraq CAIRO, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. is reportedly seeking to convince Arab countries to send troops to Iraq to replace U.S. forces after the formation of a new Iraqi government. Cairo-based Arab diplomatic sources said U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney who will start a Middle East tour on Sunday including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Oman, will discuss the matter with Arab leaders. The sources told United Press International Friday Cheney will raise with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other Arab leaders the possibility of dispatching Arab and Islamic troops to Iraq to pave the way for the reduction of American forces. Washington hopes Arab forces would participate in keeping peace in the regions from which it will pull out its troops, and as such send a positive message to Iraq's neighbors that it does not intend to keep its forces in the Arab country, the sources said. Cheney will visit Egypt on Sunday for a few hours during which he will meet President Mubarak only, Egyptian officials said without elaboration. Cheney's last visit to Egypt took place in March 2002 as part of a regional tour to win Arab support for war against Iraq which Washington waged a year later to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. The U.S. administration is facing growing pressures from Congress and U.S. public opinion to pull out troops from Iraq as quickly as possible, but officials hinted to a possible reduction of troops, arguing that an early withdrawal would give wrong signals to insurgents. Cheney's visit coincides as well with Egyptian and Saudi efforts to ease tensions between Syria and the West over the results of the international inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri which named Syrian officials as suspects and requested to interview Syrian President Bashar Assad.