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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (12363)	2/17/2006 12:34:38 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543684

Who (outside Kurdish areas) would have been keen to fight for the CPA? The best of Iraqi patriots? I think not. I think some of Iraq's soldiers and police today are indeed the best of Iraqi patriots. Even under the CPA an intelligent patriotic Iraqi might see that putting down the type of people who make up the insurgency is good for his country, and the CPA is gone now, the soldiers are serving an Iraqi government. I see no reason to portray the Iraqi soldiers as SS types. Re: Italy - On the 3rd of September, Montgomery's 8th Army crossed the straights of Messina to the Italian mainland and on 9th of September, the Allies landed at Salerno. Ever since their defeats in North Africa, many Italians wanted to get out of the war. When it was obvious that Sicily would fall to the Allies, Victor Emmanuel, III, King of Italy, dismissed Mussolini who was then placed under house arrest. Many Italians feared severe German retaliation if Italy surrendered to the Allies. In secret negotiations with the Allies, the Italians tried to extract from the Allies that British and American troops would invade the mainland of Italy in sufficient force to protect them from their former allies, the Germans. They even wanted the United States to drop an airborne division on Rome to help Italian troops guard the city against the Germans. On the eve of the invasion of the Italian mainland, Eisenhower even went so far as to send General Maxwell A. Taylor on a clandestine mission to determine the feasibility of a plan to drop the 82nd airborne division into Rome. Taylor moved past German positions by PT boat, landed at Gaeta, and slipped into Rome on September 8, 1943, but he reported that Italian troops would not be able to secure the airfields and recommended against the drop. Moreover, the Allies having fought the Italians for several years, were wary of Italian solicitude. The Italians were obliged to sign a take-it-or-leave-it surrender with the Allies which would be announced on September 8. The Allies intended to land at Salerno early on September 9 and they hoped to cause great confusion among the Germans. Having already anticipated that Italy might drop out of the war, the Germans were neither surprised or confused. geocities.com Mussolini was deposed by a revolt within his own Fascist Grand Council, and Victor Emmanuael III, the King of Italy, who had been reduced to a figurehead by Mussolini, appointed Marshal Badoglio to be the new Prime Minister. Mussolini was arrested, while Italy attempted to change sides. In the southern part of Italy, occupied by the Allies, this succeeded, and the new Italian government helped create the Italian Co-Belligerent Forces. Hitler sent German paratroops to rescue Mussolini from the mountaintop resort where he was imprisoned. He then set up the Italian Social Republic in German-held northern Italy, with Mussolini as its leader. euronet.nl Allied forces landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943, provoking rebellion in the Fascist ranks. On July 25 the Fascist Party’s governing body voted to hand executive power over to King Victor Emmanuel III, and the king had Mussolini arrested. As the Italian government surrendered to the Allies in early September, the German army began occupying the Italian peninsula. Hitler ordered the rescue of his old ally, and on September 12, in a daring aerial raid, German commandos successfully plucked Mussolini from his mountain prison at Gran Sasso, high in the Apennines. In the northern territories occupied by German forces, the Germans installed Mussolini as the leader of a new government called the Italian Social Republic, headquartered at Salò. From there, he boasted of reinvigorating Fascism and returning it to its rightful position in power in Italy. In reality, however, the Italian Social Republic was a mere puppet of the Nazis. encarta.msn.com