They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft age.

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft age.



Should read "There'll be..."

HarryKrause wrote:
Another bad week for Iraq benchmarks

By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published July 22, 2005


WASHINGTON -- There should be no question about what was the week's most
important "benchmark" on progress, or lack of it, in defeating the
insurgency and building state institutions in Iraq:

It was the publication by the New York Times Thursday of a newly
declassified Pentagon report to Congress acknowledging that only a
"small number" of Iraqi security forces were yet capable of fighting the
insurgents on their own, without any U.S. military formations to back
them up.

This admission was made in what the New York Times described as "a short
written response" by Gen. Peter Pace, the incoming Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, sent last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Gen. Pace's assessment was made in response to calls from Republican and
Democratics at his Senate confirmation hearings on June 29 to supply a
frank and accurate assessment of the state of training and preparedness
of Iraqi forces.

Gen. Pace certainly gave that: According to the New York Times report,
he told the senators that half of Iraq's new police battalions were
still in the process of being constituted and were not in any condition
to conduct independent operations, while the other half of the
police/security forces and no less than two-thirds of the new Iraqi army
were not yet capable of "planning executing and sustaining"
counter-insurgency operations, even with U.S. and allied support.

This assessment should have come as no surprise to readers of this
column, or, indeed, to anyone who has followed the numbingly monotonous
reports of continued suicide bomb massacres and other insurgent
onslaughts in Iraq. And it certainly confirms what U.S. military
intelligence sources have been telling UPI and anyone else who would
listen for many months now.

But it is immensely significant that the incoming Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs should have said as much in such clear and uncompromising terms
to the main political watchdog body of the American Republic charged
with overseeing military affairs.

And it was also striking, as the New York Times reported, that Sen. John
McCain of Arizona, President George W. Bush's main rival for the
Republican presidential nomination in the 2000 campaign and the
front-runner, insofar as there is one, for the 2008 GOP presidential
nomination, should have been in the forefront of the concerned
bipartisan senators pressing for the assessment.

Gen. Pace's plain talking also suggests a very different tone in his
leadership of the military from that of his predecessor, Air Force Gen.
Richard Myers. Myers was a favorite of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and took care never to contradict him or embarrass him on any public
occasion. And as an Air Force officer, he shared Rumsfeld's enthusiasm
for high-tech wonder weapons, especially space-based ones, and
Rumsfeld's disdain for the need to put large numbers of low-tech
"grunts" on the ground in Iraq, or anywhere else.

Pace's frankness suggests that new approaches and far more open
discussions and assessments about strategy as well as tactics in Iraq
may be coming down the pipeline in the future.

Otherwise, the raw data coming out of Iraq over the past week continued
the depressing trends of recent weeks with little change. According to
the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, 10 U.S. soldiers
were killed in the seven days from July 13 to July 20, an increase on
the six killed in the previous week.

This brought the total number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq from all causes
since the start of military operations to topple Saddam Hussein to
1,768, of whom 1,363 were killed in hostile incidents. Nine of the 10
fatalities in the July 13-20 period were killed in such incidents.

The number of U.S. troops wounded from the beginning of hostilities on
March 19, 2003 through Wednesday, July 20, totaled 13,559, the IIP said.
That was an increase of 76 over the previous seven days, making an
average of just under 11 U.S. troops injured a day in the
California-sized nation of 25 million people.

This, at least, marked a striking improvement on the far more alarming
figure of 293 U.S. soldiers injured during the previous week from July 6
to July 13, an average of more than 40 a day. And this in turn suggested
that the insurgents were either being degraded significantly by U.S. and
allied military operations or, at the very least, were being forced to
regroup and were not capable of sustaining their previous intense spike
of activity.

However, the combination of Gen. Pace's frank assessment and the fact
that the around 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq remain far too few in the
views of most counter-insurgency specialists to provide the levels of
security and manpower that are needed to snuff out the insurgency once
again offered grounds for tempering this optimism.

This was especially the case as another 65 Iraqi police and army troops
were killed by insurgents during the week of July 13-20. This is still a
little less, on average, than the 296 killed during the month of June
but not by much, and it was marginally more on average than the 113
killed in the first 13 days of this month.

In all, 2,644 Iraqi military and police have been killed by the
insurgents in the 25 months since the beginning of June 2003, the IIP
said. That averages out at somewhere over 100 a month overall, but the
figure remains stubbornly high over the past couple of months, and more
than double the overall average. On current trends, the number of Iraqi
police and military killed this month may be the second highest of the
entire insurgency, second only to June's figures.

The number of multiple casualty bombings so far in July and the
casualties inflicted by them also remain grimly high. As of July 20,
there had been 18 such incidents killing 223 people and wounding 421
more. These figures, awful as they were, still indicated a slight
improvement on the 32 bombings in May that killed 381 people and wounded
919 more, but not on the 30 bombings in June that killed 228 people and
wounded 528 more.

The very best interpretation that can be put on these figures, factoring
in Gen. Pace's warning, is that a long slog still lies ahead for the
United States and its armed forces in Iraq and that even if there will
be light at the end of the tunnel, it still looks like a very long tunnel.
- - -

There's a lot more to this story. My fair comment is that this is the
kind of journalism that Americans need to read, so that they can
determine for themselves why the sons and daughters of friends in their
hometown are coming home in bodybags.

Democracy in Iraq?

Not a chance.



No. NOYB's kids won't be drafted, at least not by Bush II.
An item on the news this week reveals that re-up bonuses are now as
high as $150,000.00 for certain specialties. That's too tempting to
pass up, especially for some kid from an underprivileged background who
has never seen even $10k in one place in his whole life. We have
morphed from the citizen militia, to universal drafted service (for the
poor and minority classes), to an "all volunteer army", to a
semi-private, mercenary force. Actually rather appropriate as we
contemplate how the role and mission of the armed forces has changed in
the last 50 years.

Personally, I have no problem with the high re-up bonuses. The
thousands of private, mercenary "security contractors" hired by
Cheney's old firm are all making well in excess of 100k no-bid dollars
a year in Iraq, why should the US enlisted grunt have to take the same
fire for maybe $2k a month? Jerk a man or woman out of the world and
away from family, stick them in hell for a string of extended, "stop
loss" tours, and order them to be prepared to kill upon command while
dodging bombs and bullets everyday? That's one heck of a huge thing to
ask, and its obscene not to pay generously for what the soldiers are
forced to give up when serving.

The R's are always touting the free market. Raise the wages and re-up
bonuses to the point where supply of recruits equals the need. Simple,
free market colution. Besides, its much cheaper to pay our
servicepeople directly than to have them quit so they can go to work
for Cheney's company where they can earn $100k plus a year- and where
our tax dollars and deficits are still paying the bill.

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

"P. Fritz" wrote in message
...

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

Insurgent attacks are becoming more numerous, more organized and more
deadly. Are you unhappy with the current administration?

Separate question:

What if the situation is far worse 6 months from now? What will be your
reaction to that? Assume for the moment that the definition of "worse" is
one created by YOU.

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"P. Fritz" wrote in message
...

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

Insurgent attacks are becoming more numerous, more organized and more
deadly.

Don't you mean "terrorist attacks"? The term "insurgency" implies the bad
guys are Iraqis.

Are you unhappy with the current administration?

I couldn't be happier with them.


Separate question:

What if the situation is far worse 6 months from now? What will be your
reaction to that? Assume for the moment that the definition of "worse" is
one created by YOU.

We'll have troops in bases over there...but they won't be regularly
patrolling the cities. Instead, they'll be using the bases as staging areas
for attacks against terrorist cells in Syria and Iran.

"NOYB" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"P. Fritz" wrote in message
...

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft
age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

Insurgent attacks are becoming more numerous, more organized and more
deadly.

Don't you mean "terrorist attacks"? The term "insurgency" implies the bad
guys are Iraqis.

Spokemen for the Army (as in "U.S. Army", in other words) say your either/or
theory is bull****. It's been 2 years and you still can't seem to shake this
bad habit. How is that you trust what Limbaugh says more than what we hear
from guys in uniforms who are in Iraq???

"NOYB" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"P. Fritz" wrote in message
...

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft
age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

Insurgent attacks are becoming more numerous, more organized and more
deadly.

Don't you mean "terrorist attacks"? The term "insurgency" implies the
bad
guys are Iraqis.

Are you unhappy with the current administration?

I couldn't be happier with them.

Same here, though I do wish he would limit domestic spending more.



Separate question:

What if the situation is far worse 6 months from now? What will be your
reaction to that? Assume for the moment that the definition of "worse"
is
one created by YOU.

We'll have troops in bases over there...but they won't be regularly
patrolling the cities. Instead, they'll be using the bases as staging
areas
for attacks against terrorist cells in Syria and Iran.

We are still free of incidents in the states, let the suicide bombers
flock to bagdad, far better then them coming here.


Noted is how doug ran from the draft question..........only liebrals in
congress have been calling for a draft.

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"NOYB" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"P. Fritz" wrote in message
...

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft
age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

Insurgent attacks are becoming more numerous, more organized and more
deadly.

Don't you mean "terrorist attacks"? The term "insurgency" implies the
bad guys are Iraqis.

Spokemen for the Army (as in "U.S. Army", in other words) say your
either/or theory is bull****. It's been 2 years and you still can't seem
to shake this bad habit. How is that you trust what Limbaugh says more
than what we hear from guys in uniforms who are in Iraq???

I'm not quoting Limbaugh. I'm quoting the Iraqi PM, al-Jaafari, from an
interview he had with David Gregory less than a month ago:


" I certainly, again, would not call this an insurgency. I would call it a
group of terrorists who are out to kill as many people as possible. That is
easy to do. Anyone can come in and blow himself up and choose the softest
targets possible and carry out acts of terror.

And all of them come from outside Iraq and they admit this freely on TV when
they are interrogated.

"Insurgents" only refers to people who have a social base and have support.
They carried out either armed uprising or peaceful uprising like Gandhi but
these are no such thing. They are terrorists."


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8335871/

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 21:46:55 -0400, "NOYB" wrote:


"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"NOYB" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"P. Fritz" wrote in message
...

"NOYB" wrote in message
...


They'll be a US flag flying over Mecca by the time they are draft
age.

and only if the liebrals take control of congress and the white house

Insurgent attacks are becoming more numerous, more organized and more
deadly.

Don't you mean "terrorist attacks"? The term "insurgency" implies the
bad guys are Iraqis.

Spokemen for the Army (as in "U.S. Army", in other words) say your
either/or theory is bull****. It's been 2 years and you still can't seem
to shake this bad habit. How is that you trust what Limbaugh says more
than what we hear from guys in uniforms who are in Iraq???

I'm not quoting Limbaugh. I'm quoting the Iraqi PM, al-Jaafari, from an
interview he had with David Gregory less than a month ago:


" I certainly, again, would not call this an insurgency. I would call it a
group of terrorists who are out to kill as many people as possible. That is
easy to do. Anyone can come in and blow himself up and choose the softest
targets possible and carry out acts of terror.

And all of them come from outside Iraq and they admit this freely on TV when
they are interrogated.

"Insurgents" only refers to people who have a social base and have support.
They carried out either armed uprising or peaceful uprising like Gandhi but
these are no such thing. They are terrorists."


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8335871/



Doh! You mean Doug is wrong again? Who would have thunk it?