IRAQ: The real trouble has not yet begun.

[bcasabee]

---

Yup. I agree. War is a big business. I wonder how rich Joma is in Netherlands already.

The United SHAME of AmeriKa...
[img width=575 height=575]http://cagle.com/news/ReaganDemocratsOutrage/iraqphotos1R/deadder.gif[/img]

War is BIG business!...VP Dick Cheney

[bcasabee]

And also the corrupt generals on the RPG side....Looy tang tanan. Gihimo tang gatasan ani nila.

[SPRINGFIELD_XD_40]

humba'a 'bay jhurdz 'aaa...lolz! by "others"....u mean....ur fellow ameriKans?

Before I will answer ur QUERY regarding " OTHERS " .... can u answer me first sa akong question ??

What is your definition of AMERICANS ?

[SPRINGFIELD_XD_40]

Be prepared to to answer my next question also :

What is the NOBLE CAUSE of the NPA ?


'Yaw nang copy and paste ha .... makabogo na ang mo gamit sa lain na taong 2 ka dako^ .

[JoRed]

Â*'bay jhurdz...Iraq vet man kaha ka....nailad sad diay ka sa estorbot ni Cheney...lolz!


Posted on Sun, Nov. 27, 2005
Â*
from the Miami Herald

Cheney led cheerleaders of Iraq invasion

By CARL HIAASEN


The loudest cheerleader for invading Iraq is on the stump once again, defending the bloody, bogged-down occupation and lambasting its critics.

Â* Â*Getting a war lecture from Dick Cheney is like getting dating advice from Michael Jackson.

The last time the United States went to battle, Cheney stayed far out of harm's way. His only wounds from Vietnam were the paper cuts he got from opening his five -- count 'em, five -- draft deferment notices.

''I had other priorities in the '60s other than military service,'' he explained to a reporter in 1989.

Thousands of other young men applied for student deferments in the Vietnam era, or received draft lottery numbers that were never called (mine was 44). However, none grew up to be vice president of the nation, peddling a contrived war that somebody else's kids would have to fight.

Nobody pushed harder than Cheney for a military strike against Saddam Hussein. Nobody was more cocksure about the presence of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear components. Nobody was more emphatic about a secret alliance between al Qaeda and Baghdad.

And nobody was more consistently wrong.

Cheney stuck to his dour WMD speech long after it was embarrassingly clear that no such weapons were in Iraq, and long after others in the administration had abandoned the argument.

The 9/11 Commission, the CIA and intelligence panels found no credible evidence of an Iraqi connection to al Qaeda, yet that never stopped Cheney from repeatedly suggesting otherwise.

One thing about the vice president: He doesn't let the facts steer him ''off message.'' Only five months ago, he surprised even fellow hawks like Donald Rumsfeld by matter-of-factly stating that the Iraqi insurgency was in ``its final throes.''

Wrong again, Dicky boy. Iraq remains a bloodbath, with insurgents killing more than 160 people in the past two weeks alone.

Polls show that an increasing majority of Americans say the war was a mistake, for reasons transcending the $5-billion-per-month tab. As of mid-week, the U.S. military death toll stood at 2,100, with no end in sight.

The Shiites and Sunnis continue slaughtering each other, and the country remains so dangerous that candidates in the Dec. 15 national elections move from town to town in armored military convoys. No one's safe from assassination, even Saddam Hussein's defense lawyers.

Back home, prosecutors have accused two Americans -- one a convicted fraud artist -- of using bribery and kickbacks to plunder U.S. funds earmarked for reconstruction services in Iraq.

At the same time, the Justice Department is finally examining the award to Halliburton -- the vice president's corporate alma mater -- of a no-bid, multibillion-dollar contract to repair Iraqi oil fields.

Day after day, the news gets worse.

After such a heavy cost -- so many heroic soldiers and innocent civilians killed or injured, so many billions spent -- the United State is more despised than ever by the radical Muslim world.

After all this, Iraq -- which had no al Qaeda presence when Saddam Hussein was in power -- is now a hotbed recruiting center for the fanatical terrorist group.

After all this, Osama bin Laden -- the most wanted man on the planet, the monster who financed and helped mastermind the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centers -- is still on the loose.

It's no wonder people feel weary and disillusioned.

For a time, Cheney's office was Smear Central for retribution against critics of the Bush war policy. Some of the fun has gone out of that sport since his right-hand man, Scooter Libby, got busted.

Last week, the vice president carefully went out of his way to exempt from scorn Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam combat veteran who has called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

''A good man, a Marine, a patriot,'' Cheney said of Murtha.

Only days earlier, a White House spokesman had lashed out at Murtha, comparing him to rabble-rousing filmmaker Michael Moore. The attacks stopped when somebody figured out that the public wouldn't stand for another vicious Swift-Boating of a war veteran.

There's no easy answer for how to get unstuck from Iraq, but there's room for open and honest debate. Unfortunately, no one has less credibility on the subject than Cheney.

The last time he was right was 1991, after the first Gulf war, when he defended the first President Bush's decision not to bomb Saddam out of power and install a new Iraqi government.

Such an invasion, Cheney warned then, would have gotten the United States ``bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.''

A veritable voice of reason, he said, ``How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?''

Good question, Dick.

It's the same one now being asked by solid Americans in all parties and all walks of life, people who don't need pious war lectures from a paper-cut expert.

[img width=600 height=389]http://cagle.com/working/051123/lane.gif[/img]

[lindsay]

i just hope that this war will be over soon. i met kids that lost their father in iraq and it broke my heart to see them struggle,trying to pick up the pieces knowing that their dad will never be there for them again.

[SPRINGFIELD_XD_40]

@ JORED .... how did you know that I am an IRAQ VET ? Ayaw ug likoy ... karon si CHENEY na pod.. abi nako si BUSH?

- WHat is your definition of AMERICANS ?

- What are the noble cause's of the NPA , INSURGENTS , TERRORIST ?

[aenigma143]

@ JORED .... how did you know that I am an IRAQ VET ? Ayaw ug likoy ... karon si CHENEY na pod.. abi nako si BUSH?

- WHat is your definition of AMERICANS ?

- What are the noble cause's of the NPA , INSURGENTS , TERRORIST ?

wala na syay matubag bai kay wala man syay ma cut and paste para ana.. ambot lang nagduda nalan hinoon ko kon naa ba sya kaugalingon pangisip sa iyang opinion...

[JoRed]

Very interesting perspective....

Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War
By Martin van Creveld
November 25, 2005

The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner.

What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon — and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.

Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the "Vietnamization" of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a "peace settlement" with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam — which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.

Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight.

Whereas North Vietnam at least had a government with which it was possible to arrange a cease-fire, in Iraq the opponent consists of shadowy groups of terrorists with no central organization or command authority. And whereas in the early 1970s equipment was still relatively plentiful, today's armed forces are the products of a technology-driven revolution in military affairs. Whether that revolution has contributed to anything besides America's national debt is open to debate. What is beyond question, though, is that the new weapons are so few and so expensive that even the world's largest and richest power can afford only to field a relative handful of them.

Therefore, simply abandoning equipment or handing it over to the Iraqis, as was done in Vietnam, is simply not an option. And even if it were, the new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was. For all intents and purposes, Washington might just as well hand over its weapons directly to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Clearly, then, the thing to do is to forget about face-saving and conduct a classic withdrawal.

Handing over their bases or demolishing them if necessary, American forces will have to fall back on Baghdad. From Baghdad they will have to make their way to the southern port city of Basra, and from there back to Kuwait, where the whole misguided adventure began. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.

Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not.

Having been thoroughly devastated by two wars with the United States and a decade of economic sanctions, decades will pass before Iraq can endanger its neighbors again. Yet a complete American withdrawal is not an option; the region, with its vast oil reserves, is simply too important for that. A continued military presence, made up of air, sea and a moderate number of ground forces, will be needed.

First and foremost, such a presence will be needed to counter Iran, which for two decades now has seen the United States as "the Great Satan." Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war — a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has. In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches.

A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.

The Gulf States apart, the most vulnerable country is Jordan, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Amman. However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance.

Maintaining an American security presence in the region, not to mention withdrawing forces from Iraq, will involve many complicated problems, military as well as political. Such an endeavor, one would hope, will be handled by a team different from — and more competent than — the one presently in charge of the White House and Pentagon.

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.



Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.

[SPRINGFIELD_XD_40]

As EXPECTED and PREDICTED from GUNG HO NPA kuno Ka JORED ... another COPY and PASTE article . Ambot lang kung ni basa ba pod siya sa gi post niya or ang TITLE lang sa article ang gibasehan . Kung wala ka ni basa pangitaa ang linya kung asa mabasa nio ni :"The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner."

Kaw na lang sabot ana mga bright man kaha ang mga AKTIBISTA , REBELDE ug TERRORISTA .


Usbon nako asa man ang tubag nimo ani dai Jored ?

- WHat is your definition of AMERICANS ?

- What are the noble cause's of the NPA , INSURGENTS , TERRORIST ?