One of Ours

The country is in flames!
Actually, most of the country continues to rebuild and is at peace. The fighting is restricted to a few areas, but this is where the reporters and cameras go...

Americans are hated in Iraq!
Not according to the polls that have been conducted, nor according to the experience of most Americans working in Iraq. But a lot of Iraqis, especially those who used to work for Saddam, or who want to set up an Islamic theocracy, don't like the Americans and their "alien" ideas about democracy and rule of law...

U.S. troops are fed up with the war and leaving [the service] in droves!
New recruits, and people wanting to stay in are at record levels in the armed forces. This applies to reservists as well as active duty troops...

The Iraqi Governing Council is despised by most Iraqis!
...Iraq has lots of constituencies, including over a hundred tribes and dozens of religious leaders with large followings. The country has not allowed any party politics for over four decades. You need more than 25 members of a government to even begin to cover the demands of all the constituencies for representation. Even after the elections, Iraq will have more than 25 organized factions competing with each other.

The U.S. Army doesn't have enough troops to handle current combat operations!
...The last two weeks of violence in Iraq were suppressed with available combat troops, and more were called for in case the violence returned on a grander scale...Sending more troops won’t help with the basic problem; gathering intelligence. That requires people speak Arabic and have police experience. More American troops won’t solve that problem, more trained Iraqi police will.

The effort in Iraq detracts from the war on terror!
...Iraq operations inflamed al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia to start attacking Saudis and other Arabs. This cost al Qaeda a lot of support among Arabs, and would not have happened if Iraq were not invaded. The war on terror is mainly a police and intelligence function. The troops that are needed most for counter-terrorism are special operations (Special Forces and commandoes.)...The war in Iraq gave the Special Forces an opportunity to work intensively, and without restraint, in an Arab country.

U.S. Army should be expanded!
It takes several years to recruit new troops, train them and organize them into new units. By then, the army leadership feels they won’t be needed...

Iraqi army should not have been disbanded after Saddam fell!
The Iraqi army has been, for over half a century, the chief source of tyranny and oppression in the country. Army commanders overthrew the government time after time, and used their soldiers to brutalize the population. By keeping all, or part, of the army intact, and armed, coalition risked a quick return of the warlord...Keeping the old Iraqi army in business was just asking for more trouble.

Iraqi security and army troops, and police cannot be relied on!
About half the police and security troops have worked well with coalition troops when put under pressure (attacked by al Sadr militia or Sunni gangs). Another 40 percent simply fled and about ten percent went over to the rebels...it was realized, even before the invasion, that the police force and army would have to rebuilt from scratch. And that’s been going on for a year. It will take years to create a professional police force and army. The old Iraqi police and army were accustomed to corrupt practices (bribes and personal influence) rather than evenhanded application of the law. Eliminating the bad habits takes time. Meanwhile, the only way law and order will return to Iraq is via a professional police and security force. Foreign troops cannot do this.

Keeping all Baath Party members out of the new government was a mistake!
All Baath Party members were barred from government jobs after Saddam was topped for the simple reason that the vast majority of the Iraqi people hated the Baath Party...some key professionals were allowed back on the job even though they had been in the Baath Party. This was always done at some cost, for there were always other Iraqis who were quite bitter about any Baath Party member being back in a position of authority. This situation will continue for a generation.

...Even as the war in Iraq proves unpopular with her core base of liberal supporters, not to mention some mainstream Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has emerged as one of the most prominent Democratic backers of the military activities. In recent months, in speeches and interviews, she has defended her vote authorizing the Republican president to wage war, argued for more troops in Iraq and sided with President Bush's contention that Saddam Hussein was, as she put it, "a potential threat'' who "was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually had them.''

Last week, with violence surging in Iraq, she stood by her decision to approve a Congressional resolution permitting military action there, though she did accuse the president of failing to build sufficient international support for the war and failing to plan adequately for the aftermath of Mr. Hussein's downfall. And she appeared to agree with President Bush's contention that the conflict in Iraq was part of the broader fight against terror, indicating that global threats like Mr. Hussein took on greater urgency in a post-Sept. 11 world. "After 9/11, a lot of threats had to be looked at with fresh eyes,'' she said in the interview....

...Mrs. Clinton surprised even some of her closest advisers by taking a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee early last year...

...While some liberals have complained about her hawkish ways, it does not seem to have hurt her overall standing with Democrats. A recent poll by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, for example, showed that 71 percent of Democrats surveyed expressed support for her...

...Mrs. Clinton's popularity among Democrats may transcend any position she might take challenging liberal orthodoxy. That, he added, was reminiscent of Mr. Clinton, who remained immensely popular in the party even as he defied liberal constituencies with moderate to conservative positions on issues like crime and welfare...

We landed at one of the Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) yesterday to drop off supplies and pick up some equipment, a somewhat routine mission for us. The crew suddenly became very solemn when we noticed a ceremony being conducted about 30-meters away. A KIA ceremony.

The flag draped coffin was placed in the position of honor in front of a formation of Soldiers while a chaplain said a few words. We were all humbled and reminded of our own mortality and that everyday out here, we are in harm's way.

As taps played we rendered our salute to the fallen Soldier, hero, who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. News of the firefight resulting in one dead and two wounded a couple of days ago had reached us. We had no idea it was Pat Tillman. Tillman turned down a big fat NFL contract with the Arizona Cardinals to become an Army Ranger shortly after 9/11.

Sgt Tillman is a hero not because he walked away from the Cardinals, but because of where he walked to. He, like all the rest of the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coastguardsmen volunteered to put himself between the bad guys and our way of life, and fight for its preservation. Rest In Peace Sgt Tillman, your service to our nation is an inspiration and you will not be forgotten. Sgt Hook out.

...It's too late to back out of Iraq. The real issue today is how to beat the insurgency without eviscerating the American military to do it. If winning the war will take more troops, then we must send them. Reconciling the need to win in Iraq with the need to sustain military readiness will be hard. It probably means we need to increase the size of the active military and adjust the mixture of active and reserve forces to put more "nation-building" troops like military police and civil affairs personnel on active duty. The Pentagon also needs to adjust its 2005 budget, shifting money from futuristic procurement programs to current operations such as reconstituting the pre-po fleets. And America needs to invest more in its reserves so they're ready to back up the active force when the military is stretched like it is today. Ultimately, we must win in Iraq. But we cannot afford to focus so single-mindedly on that mission that we neglect our ability to meet other military threats in the post-Sept. 11 world.

...Do Arabs really hate Americans more now than ever before? Maybe, but it's hard to know for sure. In liberal democracies, the most effective way of quantifying public opinion is through popular elections. But there are no free elections in the Arab world, because Arab leaders do not want to give Arabs a voice in their own governance. So, when an leader like Mubarak conveys the message that Arabs hate Americans, we should remember that he is not a pollster but a dictator, and when he wants to know what his people think, he will tell them what to think. Right now, it is convenient for Mubarak and his ilk that Arabs should think all of their problems stem from Americans...

...Arab displeasure with U.S. leaders hardly started with the Bush White House...President Eisenhower talked about the "hatred against us [in the Arab world]" way back in 1958...

...what drives anti-Americanism? The Arab world complains that the United States supports corrupt and oppressive Arab regimes. This is true...once Washington got the United Nations to impose sanctions against Iraq, Arabs held the United States, rather than Saddam, responsible for starving Iraqis to death. And as President Mubarak is likely to remind us, when the United States deposes a corrupt and oppressive leader like Saddam, it only makes Arabs hate the United States...

...there are also really bad U.S. policies in the Arab world—none of which seem to trouble most Arabs...

...Washington has sacrificed Lebanese self-determination in the fanciful hope that appeasing Syria's authoritarian regime will win Israel security. It is an awful policy, and yet there are very few Arabs outside of Lebanon who dislike it..

...When the United States has made noise [about massacres in Sudan], the typical Arab response has been that Washington has no business interfering in the affairs of a sovereign state—unless of course that state is Israel.

Of course, it is because of Washington's ostensibly unbalanced support of Israel that the United States is genuinely loathed in the region...the Arab and European outrage over President Bush's announcement that Palestinians have no "right of return" suggests that many people outside of Israel and the United States do not really believe in a two-state solution, even if they say they do...

...Americans have operated under the (correct) belief that peace is in the interests of the Palestinian people. The problem is that peace is perhaps not in the interests of the Palestinian leadership.

The difference between Arab leadership and the Arab people is the key to understanding Arab anti-Americanism. When Arabs say that they like Americans but not American policies, they are saying they do not understand the basic principle of representative government: The American people are their government...

...Anti-Americanism is how Arab leaders play the Arab people and the United States against each other to preserve their own hides. There is no incentive to be anything but anti-American, and it is very dangerous not to follow the pack. In Iraq, Arabs who work with Americans to rebuild their country are targeted for death. Anti-Americanism is the coin of the realm and has been for many years now. It is not growing. When Americans talk about rising Arab anti-Americanism, we are saying we do not understand how Arab regimes work. In effect, we are collaborating with dictators who will not allow Arabs a voice in their own governance...

...Arabs whose admiration of the United States as an embodiment of justice and liberty is so idealized that it sometimes seems to bear no relationship to an America that, as we admit, has made many errors around the world.

For instance, a Syrian friend CCs me on e-mails he writes to the U.S. Embassy in Damascus or to American officials here in the States. This came from him last week after Ted Kennedy compared Iraq to Vietnam:

Dear Senator Ted Kennedy,
I am a pharmacist from Syria and I am 56 years old. I still remember when your brother was assassinated in 1963 and we all cried. He had a dream for the whole world not just for America. We suffered under totalitarian regimes in the Middle East for the whole of our lives. We look for America as our Savior. Please Mr. Kennedy you have to know that America has a burden in freeing the other peoples of the world from tyranny. I have no right to comment on internal U.S. issues but as a citizen of the world I have the right to ask the American legislators to help other peoples in the world because this is the principle that America stands for.

Arab anti-Americanism is easy to get used to—it's been around for close to half a century. What's hard is living up to the Arabs' best expectations of America.

If you want to know the real perpetrator of every disaster or every act of terrorism, look for the Zionist Jews. They are behind all the violent and terror operations that have occurred everywhere in the world. [They do this] first of all in order to slap [the label of the attacks] on the Arabs and Muslims, and second to harm them, distort their image, and represent them to the world as terrorists who endanger innocents. What is even more dangerous is that after every terror operation they perpetrate, they leave a sign, clue, or traces meant to show that the perpetrators are Arab Muslims.

"Their most recent operation was the bombings in Spain...

"It is the Jews, with their hidden filthy hands, who play their part with expertise in order to harm the Arabs and Muslims and to intensify hatred towards them..."

"Actually, it is they who are behind the events of September 11..."

..."Events prove that Israel was perhaps the first to benefit from the September 11 incidents, and from the incidents that came after it. It planned them, misled the world, and convinced it that it was the Arabs and Muslims who carried it out."

Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the Space Shuttle Columbia's crew as those of war casualties from Iraq.

Editors are being asked to confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who were killed Feb.1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy.

An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts.

News organizations across the world have been publishing and distributing images featured on the web site.

Police arrested five Iraqis on Friday believed linked to al-Qaeda and suspected in this week's suicide bombings in Basra, and the men led police to a stash of 20 tons of explosives...

The arrests came two days after suicide attackers set off car bombs outside police stations and a police academy in this Shiite-majority southern city, killing 74 people, including at least 16 children whose school buses were incinerated by the blast as they passed one of the stations.

Five car bombs were used in the attack, and police seized two more explosive-laden vehicles Wednesday before they could be detonated...

Paul Bremer and the US concerned departments will do a big mistake if they reinstate the previous criminal Baathis just to satisfy those who are fighting in Falluja...

Well there are two kinds of Baathists and two kinds of jobs. Those who are big members in the previous regime and some of the small members especially among the security forces are criminals in a way or another. They should not be allowed to come back until cleared by special courts. If PB and the CPA allowed it to happen without taking in consideration the victims of the mass graves and the other atrocities it will be a very big mistake which may add misery to the already miserable and very tense situation.
On the other hand there are Baathists who were in the party just to be safe and have nothing to do with its atrocities. Those may go back after clearance and declaration that they will not interfere with politics again and if it happened then they may risk losing their jobs.

As far as jobs are concerned in general there are two kinds. One which is not associated with security and leadership and the others are so. We think the returned Baathists should not go back to the security or related forces neither to the leadership. There is a risk that they may use the same policy of 1960s to control power by the tanks and then terror again. They are very well known in that both in Iraq and other countries.

If PB's decree is due to the pressure from the fighting in certain parts of Iraq then he should expect other parties to do the same thing to achieve its goals.

The situation in Iraq now is very tense and any simple mistake may send the whole country into a very dangerous condition both for the Iraqis and the collation forces. This then may lead to uncontrollable anarchy and may set a fertile ground for the terrorists to come from different parts to attack every one...

The Transition of Authority to an Iraqi sovereign government is only 69 days away. In practical matters, it will be only a date on the calendar. In philosophical matters, it is a brave voyage in a region mired in centuries of darkness.

The press and even some lazy politicians seem to believe Iraqi Sovereignty is an on-off switch, controlled by one all powerful person. Suddenly on 1 July 04 there is a something evil or wonderful, according to one’s preconceptions.

The Transition has already started and is a continual project. The Transition is the collaborative effort of multiple individuals, governments, religions, ethnic groups and non-government agencies.

The Transition is happening. The Ministry of Science and Technology is the most recent ministry among a half dozen or so to become totally self-governing. While self-governing, the ministries continue to build and improve their capacity through the assistance of not only the USA but also other members of the Coalition and non-Coalition members. There is $18 billion of aide [sic] just starting in Iraq, strengthening the people and their government that will continue for years.

[...]

The UN is probably one of the least respected foreign organizations by the Iraqi people. Saddam cleverly circumvented with the help of the UN ten years of sanctions. The Oil For Food (OFF) project will be the keynote program of collaboration that impoverished the Iraqi people, built hundreds of palaces for Saddam’s group and lined the pockets of the UN administrators and several foreign national governments. Such as France and Russia. Iraqis consider the UN a collaborator with Saddam.

1 July will squarely set the mantle of responsibility upon the Iraqi people for the conduct of their own affairs. The blame game by pundits of the rebuild of Iraq will no longer be an automatic referral the US and the Coalition. There is no perfect time to shift the burden of self-government. But 1 July is a good day within a long process.

...I don’t even support the war, but if anything these pictures might push me in that direction, not the opposite. It’s almost impossible not to be moved by these photos, and impossible not to recognize from them how much care is taken with the bodies and how seriously these deaths are taken.

The Bush administration’s political judgment is obvious: pictures of dead soldiers on the front pages of newspapers will turn people against the war. And maybe they’re right. But my guess is different: seeing these pictures would make most Americans feel pride in their country and determined that these lives not be lost in vain. On the other hand, hiding the pictures just makes it look like the administration is ashamed of its war...