| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:15 am Post subject: BBC: Bush 'to reveal Iraq troop boost' (for Israel!) |
| Olbermann: Special comment about ‘sacrifice’
BBC reports Bush will reveal troop surge plan in sacrifice-themed speech
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16442767/
BBC: Bush 'to reveal Iraq troop boost' (for Israel!)
By Justin Webb
BBC News, Washington
US President George W Bush intends to reveal a new Iraq strategy within days, the BBC has learnt.
The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces.
The move comes with figures from Iraqi ministries suggesting that deaths among civilians are at record highs.
The US president arrived back in Washington on Monday after a week-long holiday at his ranch in Texas.
The BBC has been told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush's Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.
Its central theme will be sacrifice.
The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.
The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.
The proposal, if it comes, will be highly controversial.
Already one senior Republican senator has called it Alice in Wonderland.
The need to find some way of pacifying Iraq has been underlined by statistics revealed by various ministries in the Iraqi government, suggesting that well over 1,000 civilians a month are dying.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6223923.stm
So it looks like the Jewish (JINSA/PNAC) Neocons up at AEI won out over the Hamilton-Baker Iraq Study Group plan:
Is James Baker a Match
for AIPAC? :
http://antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10160
Olmert Counting on Jewish Lobby to foil Baker-Hamilton
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/11/20/olmert-counting-on-jewish-lobby-to-foil-baker-hamilton.php
So are the additional troops going to be for the Iran attack coming right down the pipe at US?:
Ritter Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/12/31/ritter-book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war.php
AIPAC and NeoCon Policy
to include bombing Iran for Israel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rf16XjbOUs
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Take a look at the following too:
VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070105_surge.htm
January 05, 2007
The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?
By Paul Craig Roberts
The New Year began on the hopeful note that Bush’s illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group’s unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld’s removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America’s top military commanders to the neoconservatives’ plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush’s Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to "support the troops," are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.
When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.
The American Establishment, concerned by Bush’s egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him. However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.
In the January 5 issue of CounterPunch John Walsh gives a good description of the struggle between the American establishment and the neocons.
Peter Spiegel, the Pentagon correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, reported on January 4 that the neocons have used the failure of the administration’s policy in Iraq to convince Bush to launch an aggressive counterinsurgency requiring the buildup of troop levels by extending deployments beyond the agreed terms. [Old guard back on Iraq policy, January 4, 2007]
Raed Jarrar (CounterPunch, January 4) suggests that the Shi’ite militias, such as the one led by Al-Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the Shi’ite militias. For longer than the US fought Germany in WW II, 150,000 US troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq’s minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional US troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against the Shi’ite militias when 150,000 US troops cannot succeed against the minority Sunnis.
The reason the US has not been driven out of Iraq is that the majority Shi’ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi’ites are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against US troops and Shi’ite militias and death squads.
The US owes its presence in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs at the same time.
Attacking the Shi’ite militias while fighting a Sunni insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores US military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. This is why General John Abizaid resigned on January 5. He wants no part of the Republican Party’s sacrifice of US soldiers to sectarian conflict.
In recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Republican Senator John McCain, who believes in the efficacy of violence and not in diplomacy, pressed General Abizaid to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq. General Abizaid replied as follows:
"Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."
Bush is like Hitler. He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.
By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis in which the US stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope to revive the implementation of their plan for US conquest of the Middle East. They believe they can use fear, "honor," and the aversion of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response to military disaster.
The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate’s demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.
Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary Magazine. It is a plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims, Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination. Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.
Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the US military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.
Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the "war on terror" is all about.
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Just saw the following at http://www.juancole.com
Alexandrovna Guest Op-Ed:
Saddam's Execution and the Campaign Against Iran
Saddam's Execution is about Iran
Larisa Alexandrovna
'PROLOGUE:
When someone does something obviously egregious, we tend to look past it because it is our nature to believe that people are naturally sane, good, and honest. We cannot imagine that anyone would willfully destroy their own country, violate their own laws, trample on their own people, and do it with such naked bravado while the world looked on.
But people have done it and do it even still, because there is also a darker side to human nature. Those of us who see the good in people look past actions that appear to be willfully evil not only because it is in our nature but it is also a foundation of our culture, as Americans, we believe guilt must be proved.
So we do not see what is going on before our eyes and directly in front of us. We look past it, around it, through it, but not at it. We cannot look directly at it, because if we do, we lose the vision of our beloved America and see something so sinister, that our minds would rather collapse than accept it.
But chess forces us to abandon our preconceptions and emotions. It pushes us to think in terms of cause and effect and it forces us to consider each action and counteraction in terms of the whole game. That is to say, chess forces us to think beyond our own present and fixed position, forcing us to reason every possible outcome of each action and counteraction.
Furthermore, chess teaches us to calculate not against a person, or a group, or a nation, but against a strategy that has no inherent religious, moral, or human characteristics. Master players can suspend their fixated self at will. Sadly, I am no master, and so I continue to struggle in seeing the game despite my human nature as an obstacle.
But sometimes, it just happens, something sets it off and there you are, inside the board, walking each action out in your mind and seeing the whole from beginning to end.
QUESTIONS AND SEEING THE BOARD
Sometime this morning, all the various and truly bizarre events the Bush administration has been engaged in recently with regard to troop levels and surges suddenly crystallized for me, as though I were sitting at a chess board and seeing the entire strategy unfold before my eyes.
This is of course my opinion and I may very well be wrong. In fact, I hope I am wrong. But the news that Saddam Hussein would be executed soon, and then the news that it would be in the next 48 hours, boggled my mind. Why on earth would anyone want to set off an ideological bomb during an already chaotic situation? I do not defend Saddam Hussein, not by any measure. But when Iraq is falling into total chaos and civil war, and as American troops continue to die, why would anyone want to add fuel to that fire, enough fuel to destroy what is left?
Suspend your emotions and think strategically. Now look at the question again and in context.
The administration is stalling as it supposedly weighs its Iraq options, when in fact they have already made their decision. How do I know they have made their decision? One need only look at the slow leaks coming out, not the least of which was Joe Lieberman’s op-ed in the Washington Post, to understand that we are going to be sending more troops to Iraq. So why does the administration wait to tell us this?
In the meantime, naval carriers are deployed to send Iran “a warning,” as though the threats thus far and the passing of sanctions are not warning enough. Add to that the detainment of Iranian diplomats invited to Iraq by the Iraqi leadership. Why is the US arresting diplomats invited to a country that the US claims is a sovereign nation governing itself?
And what about those sanctions, which ultimately mean nothing and sadly mean everything? The sanctions are so watered down as to have no real effect on the Iranian population or economy. Why even bother passing them?
Why censor Dr. Leverett's opinion piece on Iran when the CIA already cleared it?
Now given this entire context, ask yourself again why Saddam Hussein is being executed now, during Hajj even? What is the urgency?
THE UGLY STRATEGY I SEE
This is what I think may be playing out, my opinion of course. And yes, the strategy is so brazenly obvious, arrogant, and antithetical to everything America is supposed to be and stand for that it will be difficult to digest.
What the Bush administration appears to be waiting for, stalling for, while they allegedly mull over the Iraq question, is for the naval carriers and other key assets to fall into position. This will happen in the first week of January. Saddam Hussein is being executed (and I would not be surprised if every major network aired it) to enrage tempers and fuel more violence in Iraq. This violence will justify an immediate need for a troop surge, although I think it will be described as temporary. Remember too that the British press has for the past week done nothing but report that Britain will be attacked by the New Year. Clearly they are preparing themselves for a contingency, and that contingency is the massive violence that will erupt across the Muslim world as they watch (and I really believe it will be televised) Saddam’s hanging just before the New Year.
Why is the rush to execute Saddam Hussein not account for Hajj? Or does it?
The carriers will be in position. I imaging there will be an event of some sort in Iraq, or the violence will spill into friendly (our friends) territory. It will be dramatic, even more so than the immediate violence.
The attacks will be blamed on Iran, with the help of the Saudis and Pakistan. Iran will be blamed for something that happens in Iran. The naval carriers, again, will be in position. The sanctions, as watered down as they are, have given the administration the blank check they needed from the world (and they still have their blank check from Congress) to order aerial strikes. The surge troops will be in position, and I estimate that ground support will begin around late February, early March.
Saddam’s execution and the violence will also be a convenient cover while the administration moves pieces into position.
But what the planners in the administration don’t seem to realize is that the Persians are the most expert of chess players, and they are a patient, strategy minded opponent. They are watching this develop, all of it, and they too are planning their counteraction. They know better than to strike first, because in doing so, they would lose the moral argument in the eyes of the world, as well as the advantage of counteraction. The US has a superior air force, but Iran has a formidable navy, and while the house of Saud will fuel this, the fallout will be fatal. Why?
Here is why: Because the US is too stretched to be able to protect Israel, and Israel cannot sustain a long term attack. They can sustain a few hits, but they will not be able to sustain a full blown attack.
If you have any doubt, go back to the recent war with Lebanon. The British will pull out, despite promises of support. Blair is on his way out, and the British public will not tolerate support for Israel, because of its help in supporting US imperialistic aggression. Whatever terrorist cells lurk in the US, and make no mistake, our administration has done little to address this issue, will be activated.
Also consider that the house of Saud is not prepared to defend itself against an uprising, and that the US cannot protect it while simultaneously operating on three different fronts and covertly in god knows how many. Despite the various sectarian differences in the Muslim world, there are two enemies that they all agree to fight and die fighting against: the US and Israel. This attack will set off a Muslim counterattack so large, that nothing will be able to stop it or contain it.
But our leadership does not see this, because they cannot think strategically and won't think in human terms, so they are left with nothing but arrogance. And we ae left with a world ablaze. '
Larisa Alexandrovna maintains the blog At-Largely and is Managing Editor - of Raw Story.
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:25 am; edited 4 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:29 am Post subject: Poll of military finds dimmer view of Iraq war |
| Poll of military finds dimmer view of Iraq war
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003501934_militarypoll30.html
By Robert Hodierne
Military Times
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military, once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war, has grown increasingly pessimistic about chances for victory, a new poll says.
For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it, according to the 2006 Military Times Poll.
When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war — in 2004 — 83 percent of poll respondents said success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number is down to 50 percent.
Only 35 percent of military members polled this year said they approve of the way Bush is handling the war, and 42 percent said they disapprove. While approval of the president's war leadership has slumped, his overall approval remains high among the military.
Just as telling, only 41 percent of the military now say the United States should have gone to war in Iraq, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects beliefs of the general population — 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today-Gallup poll.
The Military Times survey, conducted by mail Nov. 13 through Dec. 22, is the fourth annual gauge of active-duty military subscribers to the newspapers. Results are not representative of the military as a whole. The survey's respondents, 945 this year, are on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the overall military population.
Iraq developments
U.S. casualties: Three Marines were killed in battle in Iraq, the military said Friday, making December the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops with the toll reaching 106. The Marines, all assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5, died Thursday of wounds during fighting in western Anbar province, the U.S. military said. At least 2,997 members of the U.S. military have been killed in the war, according to an Associated Press count.
Iraqis slain: A suicide bomber killed at least nine people near a Shiite mosque Friday in Baghdad, and 32 tortured bodies were found across the country.
U.S. launches raids: U.S. troops killed six people and destroyed a weapons cache in separate raids in Baghdad and northwest of the Iraqi capital, the military said.
Iranian suspects freed: Two senior Iranian operatives who were detained by U.S. forces in Iraq and were strongly suspected of planning attacks against American military forces and Iraqi targets were expelled to Iran on Friday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The decision to free the men was made by the Iraqi government and has angered U.S. military officials.
Seattle Times news services
The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Among respondents, 66 percent have deployed at least once to Iraq or Afghanistan. That number is 72 percent in the overall active-duty force, according to the Department of Defense.
The poll has come to be viewed by some as a barometer of the professional career military. It is the only independent poll done on an annual basis.
Professor David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said he was not surprised by the changing attitude within the military.
"They're seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress," Segal said. "Part of what we're seeing is a recognition that the intelligence that led to the war was wrong."
Segal said he believes military opinion often mirrors that of the civilian population, even though it might lag in time. He also said the military "will always be more pro-military and pro-war than the civilians. That's why they are in this line of work."
Whatever war plan Bush announces next month, its ultimate goal likely will be to replace U.S. troops with Iraqis. The military is not optimistic that will happen soon.
Only about one in every five service members said large numbers of U.S. troops can be replaced with Iraqi troops within two years. More than one-third think it will take more than five years. And more than half think the United States will have to stay in Iraq more than five years to achieve its goals.
Almost half of those responding think the United States needs more troops in Iraq. A surprising 13 percent said the United States should have no troops there.
As for Afghanistan force levels, 39 percent think more U.S. troops are needed there. But while they want more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly three-quarters of respondents think the military is stretched too thin to be effective.
Approval for Bush's overall performance as president remains high, at 52 percent. That's down from his high of 71 percent in 2004, but still far better than approval ratings of the general population, where that number has fallen into the 30s. | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
