[centraal] Irak na de oorlog , deel 5

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Op vrijdag 4 juli 2003 12:20 schreef schatje het volgende:

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Dan ga je maar Engels leren, BAZZA zal een goede leermeester zijn .

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_{(combinatie van vroeg en katten-:r)}

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Op vrijdag 4 juli 2003 13:16 schreef schatje het volgende:

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Ik ook niet.

We hebben alles wel zo'n beetje besproken.

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we gaan verder als er weer iets belangrijks gebeurt is tot die tijd

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Op vrijdag 4 juli 2003 13:15 schreef elcastel het volgende:
offtopic:
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Excuses voor dat geklaag van vanmorgen, beetje te snel gereageerd.

_{(combinatie van vroeg en katten-:r)}

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Op vrijdag 4 juli 2003 13:00 schreef schatje het volgende:

Mar vertel eens beste BAZZA, je vindt de kritiek niet terecht, dat het niet eerlijk ofzo??

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by Ted Rall/Special to ETR

Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction. He lied to us, the United Nations, and the soldiers he sent to die in Iraq. Bush's apologists defend his attempts to sell this obscene war as mere spin, but claiming certain knowledge of something that doesn't exist is hardly a question of emphasis. It's time to stop wondering where the WMDs are. Even if nukes and gases and anthrax turn up in prodigious quantities, it won't matter. Proof of Bush's perfidy, unlike his accusations that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, is irrefutable.
Before he ordered U.S. forces to kill and maim tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi soldiers and civilians, Bush and Co. repeatedly maintained that they had absolute proof that Saddam Hussein still possessed WMDs. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Dick Cheney said in August. In January, Ari Fleisher said: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." WMDs; not a "WMD program" as they now refer to it. WMDs--not just indications of possible, or probable, WMDs.
Absolute proof.
During the first days of the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stared into television cameras, looked right at his employers (that's you and me), and said that he knew exactly where they were. "We know where they are," Rumsfeld said. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
Uh-huh. So where are they?
"Absolute" proof is a high standard--heck, it's a nearly impossible benchmark. The last time I checked, my cat was in my kitchen, licking the milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl. As intel goes, mine is triple-A-rated--I witnessed it this morning, and I've spent the better part of a decade observing that animal. But if you were to demand absolute proof of kitty's current location, I couldn't give it to you. I'd bet that he's sleeping on my bed. But he could be in the litter box, on the windowsill, or sneaking out an open window. Truth is, I don't know where he is. To say otherwise, to present even a well-founded hypothesis as Fact, would be a lie.
Bush had conjecture, wishful thinking and stale intelligence going for him. He needed absolute proof, and the absence thereof is leading to talk of impeachment. Before the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld argues, "Virtually everyone agreed they did [have WMDs]--in Congress, in successive Democratic and Republican administrations, in the intelligence communities here in the United States, and also in foreign countries and at the U.N., even among those countries that did not favor military action in Iraq." Untrue.
Most people, me included, guessed that Iraq probably had WMDs. (Those of us who opposed the war figured that Iraq's post-Gulf War partitioning, trade sanctions and maximum 400-mile missile range limited its potential threat to the United States.) The last time we knew for sure that Iraq had WMDs was 1998. The American public, nervous about Bush's radical new policy of preemptive warfare, would not have supported a war based on maybes. In September 2002 only 18 percent of Americans thought attacking Saddam would make America safer. They demanded proof of an imminent threat before they would back military action.
The Bush Administration didn't have proof, so they spent last fall making it up. As Robin Cook, who resigned from Tony Blair's cabinet over the war, told the British Parliament: "Instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a decision about policy, we used intelligence as the basis to justify a policy on which we had already decided."
By January 2003, 81 percent of respondents to an ABC News poll said they believed that Iraq "posed a threat to the United States."
Previous administrations, reliant on the CIA for reliable information, have traditionally respected a "Chinese wall" between Langley and the White House. As Republicans blame the CIA for the missing WMDs, leaks from within the CIA increasingly indicate that Dick Cheney and others sought to politicize its reports on Iraq, cherry-picking factoids that backed its war cry and dismissing those that didn't. This dubious practice culminated with Colin Powell's over-the-top performance before the U.N., where he misrepresented documents he knew to be forged--which he privately derided as "bullshit"!--as hard fact.
The Administration's defenders, whose selective morality makes Bill Clinton look like a saint, argue that the WMDs don't matter, that Saddam's mass graves vindicate the war liars. But no one ever denied that Hussein was evil. The American people knew that Saddam was a butcher during the '80s when we backed him, and during the '90s when we contained him. They weren't willing to go to war over regime change in the '00s, which is why the Administration invented a fictional threat. Now that we know that presidents lie about the need for war, how will future presidents rally us against genuine dangers?
Lying to the American people is impeachable. Waging war without cause is subject to prosecution at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. But insiders have to talk before the media can aggressively pursue the WMD story, prosecutors can be appointed and top evildoers brought to justice.
Now Slaughtergate has its own Alexander Butterfield. Christian Westermann, a respected State Department intelligence analyst talking to Congress, has testified that Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a Bush political appointee, pressured him to change a report on Cuba so that it would back Bush claims that Cuba was developing biological weapons. Westermann says that when he refused, Bolton tried to have him transferred.
Westermann's testimony doesn't relate to Iraq, but it puts the lie to Bushoid assertions that they never messed with the CIA. A reliable source informs me that there's a "jihad" underway between Administration political operatives and the career intelligence community. "Guys are pissed off that they're being asked to take the fall for the White House. Look for more leaks in the future," this official says.
Meanwhile, Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been reduced to parsing the meaning of intelligence: "Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true," he says.
Now he tells us.
(Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the underreported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.)

Bron; http://www.easttexasreview.com/story.htm?StoryID=7

[Dit bericht is gewijzigd door MasterPeace op 04-07-2003 15:46]

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Op zaterdag 5 juli 2003 13:59 schreef schatje het volgende:

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Triest, des te meer omdat Amerikaanse archeologen het Pentagon precies hadden aangegeven wat de key plaatsen waren die van belang waren voor Irakse geschiedenis.

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De Turkse militaire top bezint zich op tegenmaatregelen als de eis niet snel wordt ingewilligd,meldt een tv-station

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Op zondag 6 juli 2003 14:36 schreef schatje het volgende:

Ik had wel verwacht dat je dat eruit zou pikken.

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Op zondag 6 juli 2003 14:30 schreef BAZZA het volgende:
"Never bite the hand that feeds you" is een spreekwoord in de VS dat nu op gaat voor de Turken denk ik.

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[Dit bericht is gewijzigd door MokroKees op 06-07-2003 14:54]

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Op vrijdag 4 juli 2003 13:09 schreef schatje het volgende:
Vervolg van [centraal] Irak na de oorlog , deel 4

Meer aanslagen op VS-soldaten Irak:
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is een dooie amerikaan soms iets om blij mee te wezen????

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In Irak zijn vier luide explosies gehoord afgelopen nacht. Dit gebeurde bij twee Amerikaanse posities in de Iraakse stad Ramadi, ten westen van Bagdad. Dit heeft de Arabische nieuwszender al-Jazeera gemeld. Volgens een correspondent ter plaatse zijn raketgestuurde granaten op de posten afgevuurd.

Na de explosies volgde er een vuurgevecht tussen de Amerikaanse troepen en de belagers.De schotenwisseling duurde zeker een half uur. Bij de gevechten werden Amerikaanse helikopters ingezet. De explosies hebben het leven van zeven Iraakse politierekruten gekost. De Irakezen werden in Ramadi door de Amerikanen opgeleid.

Een Amerikaanse militair, die zondag werd neergeschoten op de campus van de universiteit in Bagdad, is later op de dag overleden aan zijn verwondingen. Dat maakte het Amerikaanse Centrale Commando bekend. De militair werd in het hoofd geschoten.

Sinds de afgelopen grote gevechtshandelingen in Irak zijn 68 Amerikaanse soldaten omgekomen. Zeker 27 van hen stierven door geweld. Ook zes Britse militairen zijn door geweld omgekomen.

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