Bush visits Iraq.

[Aaron]

Still, looking (I gave up last night). If I do find it I'll post it here.

Thanks.

Thats why I found it odd, AFAIK Canada hasn't gotten involved, have they?

No, we're busy holding down the fort in Afghanistan. One of only four NATO countries involved in any real fighting and it's costing us heavy casualties.

No matter what job you have, if your superior comes around to see you acting normally then you aren't acting normally.

Pretty much.

I wonder if they ended up buying it...

Last I heard (I keep in contact with a British Sgt) they were still developing the Bowman system but General Dynamics (the company that makes our communications systems) was heavily involved.

I'd say it would put a lot of people in danger as well, if someone important arives the enemy would naturally like to take them out. I'm surpirsed they didn't try anything while Bush was there. Although I doubt anyone could get within a mile radius of that place.

Typically they don't announce these visits in advance. I'd be surprised if anyone but the base commander and a few other high ranking individuals knew that he was coming. So that the Iraqi's aren't tipped off (some of the contracters working on the base maybe supplying info to the resistance) so any response they come up with will be off the cuff. But this also leaves the base personnell in a lurch as their scrambling to put something together for Bush at the last minute.

[DSG2k]

I'm sorry, but I think you're missing the point. I've lived in the US my whole life, and I've never heard anyobody say that the US military was not powerful enough to subdue the militants in Iraq, given enough funding and time.

Where have you been?. I mean, seriously. The position of the leading leftists is that we cannot (be allowed to) win, and there's certainly been no discussion that they've shared with us regarding any sort of profitability analysis of funding victory. They are more than happy to cut funding, would it were not so that it would be rather obvious of them, but I've never heard any of them suggest that victory is possible in any context.

a province (to use your example) which has NOTHING TO DO WITH US?

Who are we now fighting there? Al Qaeda. Who is largely responsible for fomenting the Sunni/Shi'a violence in Iraq? Al Qaeda. Who was responsible for 9/11? Al Qaeda. Who wants us to withdraw from Iraq? Al Qaeda. Iran, too, but that's a seperate ballgame.

In other words, what effect does the day-to-day safety of Anbar province have on American life?

Plenty, both in regards to future safety of our people worldwide and political capital in an increasingly f'ed up world.

Are you saying that dissension with the administration, and expecting the government to accede to the will of the people, is "collateral damage?"

The American left is doing far more than dissent, and it has been their way for a long time, at least since Ted Kennedy attempted to conspire with the KGB to hurt the Reagan presidency. Now the players are somewhat different, but with similar goals . . . from Pelosi's unauthorized trip to hostile nation Syria to the attempts of Kerry, Murtha, Schumer, et alii to try to harm the morale of our forces by painting US soldiers as ineffective, incompetent, terroristic, and murderous, the left seems to have no problem going against not only our military and its commander in chief, but the country itself. In the good old days, politics ended at the water's edge, as the saying went.

But now, you get propagandist misinformation being spread far and wide by the left, to the point that even Osama bin Laden is quoting it back to us. As one commentator put it, "Wow. To borrow from Voltaire, if Osama bin Laden didn’t exist, Republicans would have to invent him."

[Captain Seafort]

Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe those who are campaigning to get out and get US troops home are doing so because they're getting killed in large numbers and achieving very little? The Sunni-Shia divide is far older than al-Q'aida, and while they've done their best to stir things up, they aren't responsible for the fact that Iraq is an artificial country, and one that is unlikely to hold together democratically. You can see that from the map - the western borders we probably drawn with a ruler. The country can be held together by a strong ruler, be it the king with British support or the Ba'athists, but Iraq's natural state, following ethnic and religious lines, is a three-state solution, between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds.

You say that "the left" paint US soldiers as ineffective and incompetent, torturers and murderers. Gitmo and Abu-Graihb have done the latter two on their own. The US armed forces are undoubtedly the most powerful in the world, but they have neither the training nor the experience to deal with an unconventional enemy. Even the British Army, with 30 years practical experience has been unable to snuff out the internecine conflict around Basra. They've trained the local police and army to the best of their considerable abiities and now they're in the process of getting out. That's what the US army should do.

In other words, what effect does the day-to-day safety of Anbar province have on American life?

Plenty, both in regards to future safety of our people worldwide and political capital in an increasingly f'ed up world.

Al-Q'aida in Iraq isn't a threat to the West - it's objective is to cause trouble in Iraq, and the longer the coalition stays there the happier Osama will be, because US forces in Iraq are a far easier target than western civilians in their home countries.

Indeed, al-Q generally has only been a shadow of its former self since the Afghan War almost six years ago. It isn't gone by a long stretch, but with its leadership killed, captured or scattered, and without a secure training base it doesn't have the ability to launch large-scale attacks like 9/11.

Further, in terms of the actual threat posed by al-Q'aida, even with 9/11, Bali, Madrid and London, is a less dangerous organisation than, for example, the IRA. How many times has al-Q'aida attack the continental US? Once. How many times did the IRA attack the UK mainland? Thousands of times. A terrorist's aim is (surprise, surprise) to create terror, and the prospect of a few kilos of explosive in every letter box or in every car boot is far more frightening to me than the chance of a rucksack full of HE on a train, or a plane flown into a skyscraper every blue moon.

[Aaron]

Frankly Bush and his cronies have done far more harm to the US populace than AQ ever could have done. They've turned the US into a police state and destroyed the international reputation of the country as well as driven the national debt through the roof. AQ can only dream of such success.

[Sionnach Glic]

Indeed. The sad fact is that Al-Qaeda have suceeded by allowing Bush to act normally, by doing little to stop him.
The best thing to do would be to just send the troops home. They are serving no purpose there and the whole thing is turning into Vietnam MK2.

[Captain Seafort]

Indeed. The sad fact is that Al-Qaeda have suceeded by allowing Bush to act normally, by doing little to stop him.
The best thing to do would be to just send the troops home. They are serving no purpose there and the whole thing is turning into Vietnam MK2.

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again - compared with Iraq the later stage of the Vietnam War were pure military genius.

The big problem in Vietnam was that the primary opponent and the civilian population were both ethnic Vietnamese, and it was therefore much easier to avoid civilians and take on the enemy at an operational level. Once the US forces understood that the key was to engage in a hearts and minds strategy and section and platoon level things improved drastically, and the war was effectively won by the time of the final withdrawal.

The big problem in in Iraq is that the whole country is artificial, and riven with ten thousand inter-tribal grudges stretching back decades or centuries, and the collapse of the Ba'athist regime with nothing to replace it allowed them all to carry on where they left off. The result is ten thousand private wars, most of whom would gladly brass up al_Q'aida, the US Army, or anyone else who gets in the way, on top of the anti-coalition insurgency.

[Sionnach Glic]

An excelent point, Seafort.

Going completely off topic here, but have there been any reports of 'Fragging' going on in Iraq?

[Aaron]

Yes, several.

[Sionnach Glic]

Can't say I'm surprised...
I'd love to see statistics comparing the number of incidents in Vietnam and Iraq. It would be very interesting.

We now return you to your previously schedualed thread.

[Aaron]

Here's some articles on fragging:

This one is just the text as the article has been taken down by CNN.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. military charged a staff sergeant from the New York National Guard with murdering his two commanders at a base outside Baghdad, in what is believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors.

The military initially concluded that the June 7 deaths of Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, of Suffern, New York, and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, of Milford, Pennsylvania, were caused by a mortar round.

But this week the military charged Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, New York, with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad on Thursday.

Martinez, 37, is a supply specialist with the Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, New York Army National Guard. Esposito, 30 and the father of a 1-year-old girl, was company commander and Allen, 34 and a father of four, was a company operations officer.

The "fragging" incident occurred near Tikrit -- Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad -- at Forward Operating Base Danger in what used to be one of the ousted Iraqi leader's palace on the banks of the Tigris River.

Fragging is a term used to refer to soldiers killing their superiors.

The military initially concluded the commanders were killed by "indirect fire" on the base -- a mortar round that struck a window on the side of the building where Esposito and Allen were.

A criminal investigation was launched after it was determined that the "blast pattern" at the scene was inconsistent with a mortar attack.

Martinez is believed to have allegedly used some kind of explosive device, possibly a grenade, in the attack, military officials said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still under investigation.

He was charged with two counts of premeditated murder, said a statement by the Multinational Task Force in Iraq. He currently is at a military detention facility in Kuwait.

His alleged motive was unclear. He has been assigned a military attorney and has the option of hiring a civilian lawyer, authorities said.

"Staff Sgt. Martinez has been and will continue to be afforded the extensive rights under the Uniform Code of Military Justice," military spokesman Col. Billy J. Buckner said.

U.S. military officials in Iraq declined to comment further.

Martinez's family had been touched by a string of recent tragedies, a neighbor said Thursday. He had recently lost his home to a fire and moved back to his childhood residence with his father in this industrial city along the Hudson River just north of Albany, long-time neighbor Barbara Prevost said.

His mother also had died in recent years, Prevost said.

"They've had a lot of tragedy already," she said.

The 42nd Infantry Division took over from the 1st Infantry Division in January and is responsible for a vast section of northern and central Iraq.

Martinez, who joined the New York Army National Guard in December 1990, was deployed to Iraq in May 2004.

Allen was a science teacher at George F. Baker High School in Tuxedo, New York, and was deployed to Iraq just a few weeks ago. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and four sons, ages 1 to 6.

Esposito is survived by his wife and 19-month-old daughter.

The Tikrit case is at least the second known incident in which a U.S. soldier has been charged with killing his comrades during the Iraq war.

In April, a sergeant in the Army's 101st Airborne Division was convicted of murder and attempted murder for a grenade and rifle attack that killed two officers and wounded 14 soldiers in Kuwait during the opening days of the 2003 invasion.

Hasan Akbar, a 34-year-old Muslim who was sentenced to death, told investigators he staged the attack because he was upset that American troops would kill fellow Muslims.

Fragging entered the American lexicon in the Vietnam War.

Such incidents increased late in the 1960s as the strains grew on a draftee army waging an unpopular war. Young men feeling hassled or unnecessarily put in harm's way by their commanders settled their grievances with a fragmentation grenade or a bullet in the back.

Between 1969 and 1971, the Army reported 600 fragging incidents that killed 82 Americans and injured 651. In 1971 alone, there were 1.8 fraggings for every 1,000 American soldiers serving in Vietnam, not including gun and knife assaults.

This ones from Time but I can't get the article to come up so I'll just post the text:

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
Tragedy at Camp Pennsylvania

TIME's Jim Lacey has been traveling with the 1st Brigade of the 101st
Airborne Division. Over two weeks ago, they had set up camp in northern Kuwait just 20 miles south of the Iraqi border. Then the drama began:

It was 1:45 Sunday morning when I was awakened by the first blast-a boom 10 times louder than a car backfiring. Ten seconds later there was a second blast, and then soldiers started screaming, "Get out! Get out!" Someone had slipped two hand grenades into the tent housing more than a dozen of the brigade's officers. One woman in my tent, which was 10 yards away from the explosion, yelled, "I'm hit." A piece of shrapnel from the grenade had lodged in her leg.

I ran out of my tent into total chaos. The Scud alarms were sounding, and people were running for the bunkers we use during those alerts. Most soldiers were in uniform, but some were wearing the workout clothes they sometimes sleep in. Realizing the explosions were not Scuds, I walked over to the tent where the grenades had gone off and saw two very badly wounded soldiers-one bleeding from his leg, back and stomach. The medics had not yet arrived, so soldiers were bandaging wounds themselves. I noticed the chaplain trying to comfort the dozen or so who had been wounded. Sergeants were shouting orders to form a security perimeter. Some of the younger soldiers were looking on in a state of shock and had to be hand-led to their positions. Fifteen minutes later an ambulance drove up to take away the badly wounded soldiers. One died soon after.

Because a number of officers had been hit, no one knew at first who was in charge. Then two officers who were bleeding from wounds started giving orders.

Thinking there was a terrorist on the loose, a group of soldiers began assembling to conduct a manhunt. Other officers were inspecting the tents and bunkers to make sure everyone was accounted for.

One of those officers spotted a soldier, lying alone in a bunker near the explosions, who appeared to be wounded. The soldier, who has a Muslim name, had, according to military sources, recently been acting insubordinate; his superiors had decided not to bring him into Iraq.

Camp sources say he initially admitted responsibility. The officer drew his weapon and called for backup. Then they handcuffed the soldier, read him his rights and waited for criminal investigators to arrive.

[Sionnach Glic]

Thanks for those.
I can't say I'm very surprised about it all. The sooner they get out of there the better.

[Mikey]

...but I've never heard any of them suggest that victory is possible in any context.

You're confusing terms here. Sunduing the militants in Iraq DOES NOT equal any sort of meaningful victory.

Who are we now fighting there? Al Qaeda. Who is largely responsible for fomenting the Sunni/Shi'a violence in Iraq? Al Qaeda.

We are fighting people who want to direct their own self-government. Sunn'i v. Shi'ite violence has been ongoing since the death of Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali, and the split in Islam - far longer thatn the modern nation of Iraq has been around, and FAR longer than Al Qaeda has been. Get some facts before you start spouting rhetoric.

Quote:
In other words, what effect does the day-to-day safety of Anbar province have on American life?


Plenty, both in regards to future safety of our people worldwide and political capital in an increasingly f'ed up world.

Great. Anbar province is now safe enough for the president to land, and my life as an American hasn't changed at all. Sure makes it worth all those wasted young lives, huh?

The American left is doing far more than dissent, and it has been their way for a long time, at least since Ted Kennedy attempted to conspire with the KGB to hurt the Reagan presidency. Now the players are somewhat different, but with similar goals . . . from Pelosi's unauthorized trip to hostile nation Syria to the attempts of Kerry, Murtha, Schumer, et alii to try to harm the morale of our forces by painting US soldiers as ineffective, incompetent, terroristic, and murderous, the left seems to have no problem going against not only our military and its commander in chief, but the country itself. In the good old days, politics ended at the water's edge, as the saying went.

But now, you get propagandist misinformation being spread far and wide by the left, to the point that even Osama bin Laden is quoting it back to us. As one commentator put it, "Wow. To borrow from Voltaire, if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, Republicans would have to invent him."

Sure. When the right wing can't factually validate its stance, they should accuse its opposition of sedition in order to draw attention away from itself. Just like making up "executive privilege" to avoid a subpoena. Just like wiretapping innocent civilians in violation of the law, and then saying, "It's OK, because MY administration doesn't have to abide by the law."

BTW, the paraphrased Voltaire quote was a knock AGAINST the Republicans, not for them.

[Aaron]

Heres a little update on Iraq, as you can see not much has changed:

"I haven't left my home in two months," says Kulsoom, a medical student who lives in east Baghdad with her family.

An Iraqi woman waits as US soldiers search her home in Baghdad
The US has beefed up its forces in Iraq by 30,000 soldiers

Not to see friends or relatives, not to go shopping, not to go to college for the extra training she would like before the new academic year begins.

She has a lot of catching up to do. Kulsoom missed half her classes last year because of bombs, shootings and other threats which prevented either her or her teachers from reaching class.

Only a few family members ever go out, for daily essentials. Otherwise they stay at home, day after day.

But they would agree with Gen Petraeus that there has been a drop in violence since the American troop surge.

"There are fewer attacks," says Kulsoom. "Now it is only four or five killed a day in our area. It used to be 20 or 30."

"But we are still afraid. Nothing has really changed."

Spoiling for a fight

This is typical of what you hear from many Baghdad residents, nine months since President George W Bush announced his last-ditch bid to try to turn Iraq round.


I am the optimistic one in my family but I have to admit that nothing has changed
Kulsoom
Baghdad student

US surge has failed - poll
Viewpoints: Iraq surge

But that does not mean people feel any safer. It does not mean they believe the US troop surge has yet led to any lasting change that is bringing the fighting to an end.

More concrete barriers divide the city, more checkpoints, But they have only dampened the violence, not addressed its causes, people say.

Even if most Iraqis are exhausted by conflict, the many factions are not and the struggle for power goes on in a society which Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, acknowledged was still deeply "traumatised" by years under Saddam Hussein's brutal rule.

Sunni groups who have allied themselves with the Americans in the former al-Qaeda stronghold of Anbar are not necessarily allies of the Baghdad government. Many Sunni tribesmen openly say it is a "government of Iran" controlled from Tehran.

The suspicion is returned by many in Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shia-dominated government, who are anxious about the growing strength of some of these Sunni groups.

There is no doubt that there has been a significant turnaround in Anbar, because of the tribal rebellion against al-Qaeda there. It is the one relative success the Americans can point to. But it is far from clear this will help bring wider peace and reconciliation.

Militia rule

There is little sign of this either along other ethnic, political and sectarian fault lines. Death squads still operate in Baghdad and many cities, even if at lower levels than last year.


Under Saddam, it was the mukhabarat [secret police] we were terrified of - now it is the Mehdi Army
Ali
shopkeeper
But among Shia militias in southern Iraq, fighting has intensified this year.

Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army has continued to penetrate deeper into every aspect of life.

"Under Saddam, it was the mukhabarat [secret police] we were terrified of," says shopkeeper Ali. "Now it is the Mehdi Army. They are everywhere."

The only political progress since the surge is that the various boycotts of parliament have ended. But there is no sign that Iraq's politicians can now come together to agree on legislation such as sharing oil revenues or constitutional reform.

In their marbled villas, hidden behind the walls and razor wire of the Green Zone, Iraq's democratically elected politicians seem ever more out of touch.

Outside, people wrestle with the same problems.

"We only get two hours of electricity a day," says Kulsoom. "One in the morning, one in the evening."

The Americans send out constant press releases to journalists talking of new projects to improve the power system. But the situation is as bad as ever.

Even this lower level of violence is still shockingly high. Iraqis still get kidnapped every day.

Gen Petraeus told Congress that the number of car bombs was down by half from the start of the year. But they are still running at a rate of three a day.

Leaving Iraq

With so little sign of permanent change, that is why so many people continue to leave Iraq - up to 20,000 a week heading to already overwhelmed Syria.

Kulsoom says 60 or 70 of her classmates have left in the past 18 months, many of her professors too.

One hopeful sign is that a majority of Iraqis remain committed to the idea of Iraq as a unified state - not one split between Shia, Sunnis, Kurds and other groups.

A poll for the BBC and ABC News released on the eve of the general's testimony bore this out.

But this is not enough to overcome the violence.

"I am the optimistic one in my family," says Kulsoom. "But I have to admit that nothing has changed."

BBC

[Mikey]

And exactly how many lives is enough to spend on foreign soil in order to win the result that "nothing has changed"?

[Sionnach Glic]

Damn, if things in Iraq had actually improved then at least some good may have come out of it.
There really isn't any reason to stay there any more, is there?