Full Version: Iraq Study Group
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 6 2006, 05:47 PM) 
And.................................
Ok, I had to look. ........... Any report of this supposed magnitude that uses Tony Soprano as an example is not fit to be used as toilet paper. Christ, what a bunch of self serving political pap...............
Read it, listened to its authors on the talk circuit of pundits, cynics and naysayer types. Listened to CNN-"NET" and FLOLOX-IT spin masters and reduntants recap their views not remotely in the report...
Got a few good things from it. One, better united in an agreeable strategywhat ever that may be than disunited in our present mantra of opined punditry talking past one another instead of to one another shouting from the roof tops of punditry, "your stupid" "your worng" and "I am absolutely right in natterings we have all had so divided for the last 4 .5 years...
Second, as it seems was already in play by what was in Abaza's testimony last week, we are bringing the Iraqi's kicking and screaming out front to die and or decided the fate, as has been previously implied, but now appearantly modified, by comments from the administration. Come 2008, we are standing down whether you stand up or not and your going up front to decided the fate or continue the deadly chaos as to the future of your own country by taking the responsibilty for the opportunity we paid to give you.
I have little hope in Negotiation with this Iran ploy, though why not, it plays good to obber-nannys in this world. Though, I think, with only the slightest of hope, perhaps the Sunni Arabs of the region who have lot to lose per se as to what happens in Iraq, may help persuade Syria to lossen its ties to Iran and the disconnect the insurgent conduit in Anbar...
Yet, over all, It seems to me we still are here as before...
THA T
IS
ALL!
Got a few good things from it. One, better united in an agreeable strategywhat ever that may be than disunited in our present mantra of opined punditry talking past one another instead of to one another shouting from the roof tops of punditry, "your stupid" "your worng" and "I am absolutely right in natterings we have all had so divided for the last 4 .5 years...
Second, as it seems was already in play by what was in Abaza's testimony last week, we are bringing the Iraqi's kicking and screaming out front to die and or decided the fate, as has been previously implied, but now appearantly modified, by comments from the administration. Come 2008, we are standing down whether you stand up or not and your going up front to decided the fate or continue the deadly chaos as to the future of your own country by taking the responsibilty for the opportunity we paid to give you.
I have little hope in Negotiation with this Iran ploy, though why not, it plays good to obber-nannys in this world. Though, I think, with only the slightest of hope, perhaps the Sunni Arabs of the region who have lot to lose per se as to what happens in Iraq, may help persuade Syria to lossen its ties to Iran and the disconnect the insurgent conduit in Anbar...
Yet, over all, It seems to me we still are here as before...
THA T
IS
ALL!
Bush cannot keep face and still agree with many major points of this report. He may wait a few more weeks for the other reports coming from Defense and State. He is unlikely to accept the recommendation to start talks with Iran or Syria; he doesn't do that.
At least the report comes closer to the truth than what the administration's been telling us for years. Iraq is even more of a quagmire, briar patch and quicksand than it was when the invasion began. The report wisely doesn't say "Stay the course" forever, nor does it say "Get out now" or at a certain time.
But seriously, realistically, would Iraq fall apart much worse if all the US troops left now, or later?
At least the report comes closer to the truth than what the administration's been telling us for years. Iraq is even more of a quagmire, briar patch and quicksand than it was when the invasion began. The report wisely doesn't say "Stay the course" forever, nor does it say "Get out now" or at a certain time.
But seriously, realistically, would Iraq fall apart much worse if all the US troops left now, or later?
QUOTE (Fit2BThaied @ Dec 7 2006, 07:19 PM)
Bush cannot keep face and still agree with many major points of this report. He may wait a few more weeks for the other reports coming from Defense and State. He is unlikely to accept the recommendation to start talks with Iran or Syria; he doesn't do that.
At least the report comes closer to the truth than what the administration's been telling us for years. Iraq is even more of a quagmire, briar patch and quicksand than it was when the invasion began. The report wisely doesn't say "Stay the course" forever, nor does it say "Get out now" or at a certain time.
But seriously, realistically, would Iraq fall apart much worse if all the US troops left now, or later?
At least the report comes closer to the truth than what the administration's been telling us for years. Iraq is even more of a quagmire, briar patch and quicksand than it was when the invasion began. The report wisely doesn't say "Stay the course" forever, nor does it say "Get out now" or at a certain time.
But seriously, realistically, would Iraq fall apart much worse if all the US troops left now, or later?
The answer to your last comments it would seem is found in consequences in your signature, as to IF IT WERE YOUR DECISION ALONE.
I'm often wrong. (AT WHAT PRICE IS THIS UNKNOWN CAPABILITY AFFORDABLE AND WHOM, WHEN AND HOW MUST THE PRICE BE PAID?)
But I'm not always wrong. AGAIN, AT WHAT PRICE AND BY WHOM, WHEN AND HOW, CAN YOU KNOW, UNTIL YOU CARRY THE BURDENS OF CONSQUENCES IN DECIDING ON YOUR SHOULDERS ,UNKNOWING, IF OFTEN WRONG OR NOT ALWAYS WRONG, WILL BE THE OUTCOME OF CONSEQUENCES YOU DECIDE.
ustrader, I'm so vain, I probably think your last post was about me.
Surely it wasn't a response on the material points that I made. It didn't even answer the question, so I'll repeat it, and rephrase it, if bpen rai:
Iraq is already a bloodbath, resembling civil war. If the coalition were to leave tomorrow, apparently Iraq would implode into an even worse bloodbath. But will "Iraq-ation" of the police state be any more successful than "Vietnam-ation" of the war in Vietnam was? I doubt it.
Let's hope and pray that President Bush finds one of the many reasons to bring the troops home, sooner than later.
Surely it wasn't a response on the material points that I made. It didn't even answer the question, so I'll repeat it, and rephrase it, if bpen rai:
Iraq is already a bloodbath, resembling civil war. If the coalition were to leave tomorrow, apparently Iraq would implode into an even worse bloodbath. But will "Iraq-ation" of the police state be any more successful than "Vietnam-ation" of the war in Vietnam was? I doubt it.
Let's hope and pray that President Bush finds one of the many reasons to bring the troops home, sooner than later.
QUOTE (Fit2BThaied @ Dec 8 2006, 12:16 PM)
ustrader, I'm so vain, I probably think your last post was about me.
Surely it wasn't a response on the material points that I made. It didn't even answer the question, so I'll repeat it, and rephrase it, if bpen rai:
Iraq is already a bloodbath, resembling civil war. If the coalition were to leave tomorrow, apparently Iraq would implode into an even worse bloodbath. But will "Iraq-ation" of the police state be any more successful than "Vietnam-ation" of the war in Vietnam was? I doubt it.
Let's hope and pray that President Bush finds one of the many reasons to bring the troops home, sooner than later.
Surely it wasn't a response on the material points that I made. It didn't even answer the question, so I'll repeat it, and rephrase it, if bpen rai:
Iraq is already a bloodbath, resembling civil war. If the coalition were to leave tomorrow, apparently Iraq would implode into an even worse bloodbath. But will "Iraq-ation" of the police state be any more successful than "Vietnam-ation" of the war in Vietnam was? I doubt it.
Let's hope and pray that President Bush finds one of the many reasons to bring the troops home, sooner than later.
It's now called the coalition of the leaving.
And, Mr. Fit2B, Trader's post wasn't about you. It was, as usual, about shooting a messenger. Few if any of us here have the time or patience to try to muddle through Trader's pseudo-intellectual caca de toro.
(FITS)
ustrader, I'm so vain, I probably think your last post was about me.
Now FITS, I think perhaps, stealing a bit of angry foam from D2D2’s nattering, you play the drama queen, in altitude and pretense, with dishonesty of a pseudo-psychoanalyst, in comprehension.
(FITS)
Surely it wasn't a response on the material points that I made. It didn't even answer the question, so I'll repeat it, and rephrase it, if bpen rai:
Fits, my deviated neo-prog, implying Bepen rai’ loosely meaning “Nothing”, to my rebuttal was more akin to 'Mai mee arai', loosely meaning 'No-have-what’ or more in the kindred parlances of neurotic neo-prog-ism childreeen’s English 'Whatever'.
My answer was an appropriate consequential answer of the responsibility rebutting this me-ism prog-ishness that assume to know right and wrong, yet admittedly knowing with certainty, in it, knowing not the outcomes and consequences to this interpose of narrow present tense me-ism supposition.
Nor was your redaction of the original, that second rendition, adding comparatively Vietnam in a disassociated reality and disconnected implications of far differing circumstances and aftermath and of real consequence you assume are equal but are far from it.
An addition, unrelated, totally, in differing events, outcomes and consequences, yet equaling nattered in hypothesis, as any more insightful and righteous than in the first interpose of narrowing focused me-ism.
Thusly, this lame attempt at faking right and going far left in nattering of fallacious pretense did little nor offered little to the issue, outcome and consequences as to carrying the responsibility for making the decision. To which you pretend, in ignore, my literate that you do not carry such responsibility for those consequences, yet assume righteously, that in this, that has consequences for millions, your not wrong, even if as admittedly pronounced, your are often wrong.
I, any more than you, have no crystal ball or clairvoyance in answer to what the future of Iraq holds stay or go, yet as implied your pompous assumption overwhelmed in me-ism, ( IBID; A Progressive idiom of thought or some say, lack thereof ; ME-ism, the concept that in me, is me and for me, and, by me ,and, thus all about me and all else is Mai bpen rai' (ไม่เป็นไร ) 'no-is-nothing'
(FITS) But seriously, realistically, would Iraq fall apart much worse if all the US troops left now, or later?
Redacted to the following’
Iraq is already a bloodbath, resembling civil war. If the coalition were to leave tomorrow, apparently Iraq would implode into an even worse bloodbath. But will "Iraq-ation" of the police state be any more successful than "Vietnam-ation" of the war in Vietnam was? I doubt it.
Let's hope and pray that President Bush finds one of the many reasons to bring the troops home, sooner than later
Poor D2d2, again, with the anguished nattering of ponytail neo-prog-ish me-isms.
Beyond the obvious implied oxymoronic combine of terms of contradiction in the usage; Pseudo and Intellect, made, as usual, in the attenuation of childreeen’s neophyte nattering and urban me-ist and over emotion, that uses the term in a deviate of obtuseness, implying in meaning, URBAN childishness ;
Pseudo-Intellectual; Omg. You are Stupid. You are an idiot for not agreeing with everything I say. I know I'm right, even though I know nothing about the subject, because my friend knows someone that read someone's blog somewhere that mentioned something about it. I win, so stfu, you unintelligent moron. God, your stupid. You're such a stupid idiot. Antidisestablishmentarianism
Then to add insult to self inflicted injury our angry me-ist neo-prog d2d2, adds further illiteracy in neophyte obtuse and misusage, using the Spanish terms “caca de toro’, meaning (S h I t of Bull) when he unknowingly means to use, in his overwhelmed delusions, anguish and anger, the Spanish terms, “toro caca” meaning (Bull S h I t)
THA T
IS
ALL!
ustrader, I'm so vain, I probably think your last post was about me.
Now FITS, I think perhaps, stealing a bit of angry foam from D2D2’s nattering, you play the drama queen, in altitude and pretense, with dishonesty of a pseudo-psychoanalyst, in comprehension.
(FITS)
Surely it wasn't a response on the material points that I made. It didn't even answer the question, so I'll repeat it, and rephrase it, if bpen rai:
Fits, my deviated neo-prog, implying Bepen rai’ loosely meaning “Nothing”, to my rebuttal was more akin to 'Mai mee arai', loosely meaning 'No-have-what’ or more in the kindred parlances of neurotic neo-prog-ism childreeen’s English 'Whatever'.
My answer was an appropriate consequential answer of the responsibility rebutting this me-ism prog-ishness that assume to know right and wrong, yet admittedly knowing with certainty, in it, knowing not the outcomes and consequences to this interpose of narrow present tense me-ism supposition.
Nor was your redaction of the original, that second rendition, adding comparatively Vietnam in a disassociated reality and disconnected implications of far differing circumstances and aftermath and of real consequence you assume are equal but are far from it.
An addition, unrelated, totally, in differing events, outcomes and consequences, yet equaling nattered in hypothesis, as any more insightful and righteous than in the first interpose of narrowing focused me-ism.
Thusly, this lame attempt at faking right and going far left in nattering of fallacious pretense did little nor offered little to the issue, outcome and consequences as to carrying the responsibility for making the decision. To which you pretend, in ignore, my literate that you do not carry such responsibility for those consequences, yet assume righteously, that in this, that has consequences for millions, your not wrong, even if as admittedly pronounced, your are often wrong.
I, any more than you, have no crystal ball or clairvoyance in answer to what the future of Iraq holds stay or go, yet as implied your pompous assumption overwhelmed in me-ism, ( IBID; A Progressive idiom of thought or some say, lack thereof ; ME-ism, the concept that in me, is me and for me, and, by me ,and, thus all about me and all else is Mai bpen rai' (ไม่เป็นไร ) 'no-is-nothing'
(FITS) But seriously, realistically, would Iraq fall apart much worse if all the US troops left now, or later?
Redacted to the following’
Iraq is already a bloodbath, resembling civil war. If the coalition were to leave tomorrow, apparently Iraq would implode into an even worse bloodbath. But will "Iraq-ation" of the police state be any more successful than "Vietnam-ation" of the war in Vietnam was? I doubt it.
Let's hope and pray that President Bush finds one of the many reasons to bring the troops home, sooner than later
Poor D2d2, again, with the anguished nattering of ponytail neo-prog-ish me-isms.
Beyond the obvious implied oxymoronic combine of terms of contradiction in the usage; Pseudo and Intellect, made, as usual, in the attenuation of childreeen’s neophyte nattering and urban me-ist and over emotion, that uses the term in a deviate of obtuseness, implying in meaning, URBAN childishness ;
Pseudo-Intellectual; Omg. You are Stupid. You are an idiot for not agreeing with everything I say. I know I'm right, even though I know nothing about the subject, because my friend knows someone that read someone's blog somewhere that mentioned something about it. I win, so stfu, you unintelligent moron. God, your stupid. You're such a stupid idiot. Antidisestablishmentarianism
Then to add insult to self inflicted injury our angry me-ist neo-prog d2d2, adds further illiteracy in neophyte obtuse and misusage, using the Spanish terms “caca de toro’, meaning (S h I t of Bull) when he unknowingly means to use, in his overwhelmed delusions, anguish and anger, the Spanish terms, “toro caca” meaning (Bull S h I t)
QUOTE
P.S. The message of consequence is in the burden of responsibity of outcomes, in either being wrong when thought to be right and or being right when thought to be wrong-TRADER
THA T
IS
ALL!
Kojai, ustrader; chai. If were to have been the flaggellation of the umbilicus in the afterbirth of the forecastle on the ship of decrepitude that ensconced Lady Liberty on her embarcation to a grand grandiloquence, verily. Yet forsooth, the coaltion of the leaving might perhaps have estrangulated the effervesence by which the ebullience of ecstasy effluviated so effecitively yet flatulently.
And that's the truth!! That's not all!!
And that's the truth!! That's not all!!
QUOTE (Fit2BThaied @ Dec 9 2006, 11:59 PM)
Kojai, ustrader; chai. If were to have been the flaggellation of the umbilicus in the afterbirth of the forecastle on the ship of decrepitude that ensconced Lady Liberty on her embarcation to a grand grandiloquence, verily. Yet forsooth, the coaltion of the leaving might perhaps have estrangulated the effervesence by which the ebullience of ecstasy effluviated so effecitively yet flatulently.
And that's the truth!! That's not all!!
And that's the truth!! That's not all!!
[font=Palatino Linotype]
A Translation of a disaffecting “Ngat Mao sut Nawtlut”?
Kojai, ustrader; chai Yes, FITS, I have always known you understand when you wraithlike you do not.
If were to have been the flagellation ( actually Flagellation- whipping) the of the umbilicus (navel) in the afterbirth( residue from embryonic sack) of the forecastle ( housing in the bow of the ship) on the ship of decrepitude ( worn out) that ensconced ( securely and conformably) Lady Liberty on her "embarcation" (actually commonly accepted as “embarkation” -naval term to go aboard or get on or perhaps-jus pos, unlikely given edification of the author, as in the poem “embarkation,” Thomas Hardy’s illogic of falcate on war) to a grand grandiloquence, (pompous or Bombastic speech) verily (confidentially in truth and in fact) Yet forsooth ( indeed in truth,) the “coaltion” (actually coalition- union of alliance) of the leaving might perhaps have "estrangulated" (actually strangulated- to strangle) the effervescence (actually effervescence-lively bubbling form that creates the Alka-Seltzer Experience.) by which the ebullience( high spirited exuberance) of ecstasy( extemely happy "effluviated" (actually effluviate- as in giving of effluvium a by product of waste.) so effecitively (actually effectively- to accomplish as intended and purpose) yet flatulently (having unsupported pretensions; inflated and empty; pompous; turgid:.
And that's the truth!! That's not all!!
Your copulation of disjointedness using childishness as a measure of your tidiness disguised as a lampoon is pathetic and extremely poorly done for a self professed educated man boy. I apparently hit a nerve of anguished anger, much similar to that of D2D2. My apologizes if I knotted your fancies there FITS.
Not withstanding this torpid harangue of nerve hit, it does show how right one is to stand against those of like mind’s social, political, and ideological neo prog-ish nattering. For in them, are the very refuse of this relativist me-ism that so unsophisticatedly and narcissistically threats a nation and a world, they undeservingly, yet sadly, wish to set asunder in demean and one legged impugn.
QUOTE
“Why is what people say important? Those, who, in care of it will positive of it, " those who do not care will nettle in the negativity of it.
Most, neither listening, nor caring to listen, consumed in 21st century ME-ism; that in me, is me and for me, and, by me, and, thus, all about me and all else is not about me. In this is our disunity, Schadenfreude; "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune,” a desire for that we oppose so overwhelmingly presence in these commentaries.-TRADER
Most, neither listening, nor caring to listen, consumed in 21st century ME-ism; that in me, is me and for me, and, by me, and, thus, all about me and all else is not about me. In this is our disunity, Schadenfreude; "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune,” a desire for that we oppose so overwhelmingly presence in these commentaries.-TRADER
THA T
IS
ALL!
What were we discussing?
QUOTE (Fit2BThaied @ Dec 10 2006, 11:35 AM)
What were we discussing?
The Iraq study group and the completely discredited neo-con war for profit is what we were discussing, but that is only the beginning. Driven by public demand, more and more of Bush's lies, corruption and stupidity will be revealed by Congressional investigations, leading to only one conclusion - impeachment. The United States Constitution requires the removal of criminals like Bush and Cheney from public office.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Impeachm...coast_1210.html
QUOTE (Fit2BThaied @ Dec 10 2006, 06:35 PM)
What were we discussing?
It seems, as we note so often here, opinions are like A-holes, everyone has one, thinking in self interest, theirs stinks less than the next guys.
Iran Reacts Favorably to the Baker-Hamilton Plan
While the White House remains wary of the proposal to talk with Iran, Tehran sources tell TIME that the regime believes such talks are in the country's best interest.
The Iranian government has responded more positively than the Bush Administration has to the Iraq Study Group's proposal for talks between the two. And government sources in Tehran tell TIME that this reflects a sincere and calculated desire among the Iranian leadership for improved relations with Washington
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1568431,00.html
Iraqi leader criticises US report.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has criticised some of the main findings of a high-level US report calling for a change of strategy in Iraq.
Speaking at his Baghdad residence, Mr Talabani said: "I think that the Baker-Hamilton report is not fair and not just, and it contains dangerous articles which undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and its constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6165943.stm
Kurds Reject US Study Group's Report
In a strongly worded statement, the president of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region rejected in its entirety the report by the Iraq Study Group, and threatened that Kurds would opt for secession from Iraq should Washington try to implement some of the key recommendations of the report regarding Kirkuk, federalism and the constitution.
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/salih.php?articleid=10137
Israel rejects Iraq study ideas
Israel has rejected claims by a team of elder US statesmen that the Iraq crisis cannot be resolved unless the US also tackles the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Mr Olmert said Syria first would need to break ties with Israel's arch-foe Iran, and with anti-Israeli militant groups in Lebanon and the occupied territories.
"I don't think there is a Syrian desire for war with us. We certainly don't have a desire to fight with them. That doesn't mean conditions ripe for us to negotiate with them," Mr Olmert told an annual gathering of Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv.
Policy priority
James Baker and Lee Hamilon's bipartisan ISG report says: "The US will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the US deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."
It recommends directly involving Israel, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians in talks at the earliest opportunity.
The BBC's Matthew Price in Jerusalem says it is no surprise that the Israeli prime minister disagreed with the ISG assessment.
Israel knows President George W Bush's foreign policy priority is Iraq and it does not want its greatest ally to start seeing it as part of the problem, he adds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6217656.stm
Reactions to the long-awaited Iraq Study Group report
We randomly sampled the web by using Copernic Agent – a software that uses keywords and brings up matches found from all possible website accessible to it at any given time. The keywords were "Baker-Hamilton" and "Comment" and the search was limited to websites originating within USA. Seven hundred results came up and we randomly selected 30 (the fourth of each displayed result). When the site was a list of comments on an article about the report the fourth in the list of comments was sampled.
President Bush said: “The thing I liked about the Baker-Hamilton report is it discussed the way forward in Iraq. And I believe we need a new approach.” “I understand how hard it is to prevail. But I also want the American people to understand that, if we were to fail -- and one way to assure failure is just to quit -- is not to adjust and say it's just not worth it. If we were to fail, that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future.”
“If the president is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi
“The president has the ball in his court now ... and we're going to be watching very closely,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said the key question now is whether President George W. Bush will effectively implement a new policy. “We need the White House to become the ‘Iraq Results Group.’”
Senator Barak Obama (D-IL) said it's time for change, “In presenting a realistic view of how far the situation has deteriorated, the report avoids the partisan rhetoric that has characterized too much of this debate and offers a unique chance to forge a bipartisan consensus about how to move forward in Iraq.”
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Hamilton and Baker that he does not believe their approach will work taking issue with that approach, saying he did not agree with the Baker-Hamilton group's conclusion that the U.S. military does not have enough forces available to sustain a troop boost in Iraq. “There's only one thing worse than an over-stressed army and marine corps, and that's a defeated army and marine corps. I believe this is a recipe that will lead to our defeat sooner or later in Iraq.”
Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich), the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “The report represents another blow at the policy of 'stay-the-course' that this administration has followed. Hopefully, this will be the end of that stay-the-course policy." Levin. Referring to Democrats' election victory in November, he said, "the American people rose up against staying the course in Iraq, because it was not working."
Representative John P. Murtha (D-PA), whose call for withdrawal touched off a firestorm last year, complained that the panel offered a prescription “no different from the current policy” and called for quicker and more “decisive” action: “Staying in Iraq is not an option politically, militarily or fiscally.”
Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-founder of the Out of Iraq Caucus, “I agree with them totally, that -- and they’re saying it loud and clear -- it’s a mess. The occupation is a mess, and we need a political solution. We also need to reach out regionally to the other leaders in the region. And they -- imagine, they have to tell the President of the United States to reach out to other leaders around the world? But they’re doing it. Let’s hope he pays attention to them. I, like Barbara Lee, disagree with a timeline that adds 12 to 18 months to this occupation, because, you see, all we’re doing when we’re there is making everything worse. It’s getting worse every single day that we’re in Iraq.” She concluded: “I hope the people of this country aren’t lulled by this report, because, you see, it’s way too late. This is too little, too late to start, all of a sudden, realizing we’ve got a disaster in Iraq.”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), said “The American public did not vote for the Iraq Study Group. They voted for a new congress and a new direction in Iraq - - out. Many who voted for change will be surprised to learn some who oppose the war will continue to fund it, in the name of supporting the troops in the field.”
Military
Retired General Barry McCaffrey, who fought during the 1991 Gulf War, said “They came up with a political thought but then got to tinkering with tactical ideas that in my view don't make any sense. This is a recipe for national humiliation.”
Jack Keane, the retired acting Army chief of staff who served on the group’s panel of military advisers, described that goal of removing combat troops by Spring 2008 as entirely impractical. “Based on where we are now we can’t get there,” General Keane said in an interview, adding that the report’s conclusions say more about “the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”
“The new Iraqi Army will need years to become equal to the challenge posed by a persistent insurgency and terrorist threat,” Lt. Col. Carl D. Grunow, a former military adviser, wrote in a recent issue of Military Review, a journal published by the United States Army.
“There is no meaningful plan for creating a mix of effective Iraqi military forces, police forces, governance and criminal justice system at any point in the near future, much less by 2008,” noted Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the group’s study.
Defense expert Andrew Krepinevich, whose counter-insurgency theory formed the basis of the U.S. and Iraqi crackdown in Baghdad code-named Operation Together Forward, told Reuters "The idea ... is a good one (but) this will likely lead to an increase in U.S. casualties.”
Iraqi and Middle East Reaction
“I don't care about the report,” said Ahmed Rafii, a taxi driver from Falluja. “I didn't follow it and didn't hear about it. The Americans came for the oil and they are going to stay as long as the oil is there.”
“The situation is grave, very grave in fact, and cannot be tolerated,” Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said Wednesday on the pan Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya, he warned that improving the battlefield capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces would not be “the magic wand that brings a solution in one day.”
A prominent Kurdish lawmaker, Mahmoud Othman, criticized the panel for failing to include Iraqis, saying the “report was written in the first place to generate agreement among the Americans.” Further, “It seems those who wrote it have little knowledge about the situation in Iraq. They only visited the Green Zone for some days, they did not go to the south or to Kurdistan to ask the people there. This is the reason why their outcome and recommendations are superficial and inaccurate.”
Khalid Abdel-Rahim, a Sunni Arab employee of the Industry Ministry said “U.S. officials have long discussed training more Iraqi troops, but they have not been able to control widespread attacks by insurgents and militias. ... I don't expect this latest report will solve our problems.”
Hadi Muhsin, the Shia owner of a stationery shop in Baghdad, said: ''This report comes after the deaths of tens thousands of Iraqis. It doesn't recommend the total withdrawal of U.S. forces or set a timetable. ... I don't think this report will bring positive change. We don't even know if President Bush will follow it.''
Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, echoed Saleh's comment that the report's recommendations were ''positive on the whole.'' He told The Associated Press they conformed with the government's own plans to deal with the rampant violence engulfing the country since 2003.''The parts I read were very positive,'' he said.
Sheik Mohammed Bashar al-Fayadh, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni Arab group said the recommendations gave precedence to U.S. interests over Iraq's and sought ''guarantees for an exit (from Iraq) but without paying heed to preventing a civil war from breaking out. The report recommends the training of Iraqi forces, but will it reach the level of the American army? The answer is 'no.' If the American army is unable to settle the question and get out of this predicament, so how can that be?”
Commentators, Advocacy Groups and Think Tanks
William Kristol, the neocon editor of The Weekly Standard and a member of the Project for a New American Century called the report “a disguised surrender,” “The real recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study group is 'stay the course.' For this we waited nine months?” He added about President Bush: “Right now we can only applaud the president's courage and determination and his willingness to resist the pressures of those who would now sound the retreat.”
Frederick Kagen of the American Enterprise Institute writes “The reason: The report basically punts on the most important issue of the day--establishing security in Iraq. All of the pious exhortations to get Iraqis to sit down with one another, to engage Iran and Syria and to find political compromises are meaningless if we are unable to stem the tide of bloodshed that now engulfs much of Baghdad and Anbar province. Yet the Baker Report devotes scant space (eight pages out of 56 in the proposals section) to the security problem and its recommendations are unoriginal: Increase the number of American soldiers embedded in Iraqi units as trainers by stripping them out of the combat brigades now working to fight insurgents.”
The Center for American Progress’s Lawrence Korb and Max Bergamann urge adoption of the report, writing the report “closely replicates the plan that the Center for American Progress first released in September 2005 called “Strategic Redeployment,” offers a new, pragmatic approach to the war in Iraq and worsening crises across the Middle East—one that even its authors concede may not stave off defeat, but that still presents realistic options in the face of a deteriorating set of circumstances.”
Anthony Arnove author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal “Well, I think the report offers only a slight correction of course for a policy that needs fundamental reversal. We need to bring the troops home, not to talk about prolonging the presence of the United States in Iraq. This report of the Iraq Study Group lays out keeping troops, not only combat troops, in Iraq until 2008, but well beyond that . . . it continues a policy that the Bush administration has put forward, of we will stand down as the Iraqis stand up . . . as long as US troops are there, the US troops will be a source of instability and will fuel sectarian conflict, rather than dampen it.”
The Nation Magazine editorializes: Democrats should not cede their popular mandate to the murky consensus of the Baker-Hamilton report, which equivocates on the alternative to prolonged war--speaking of "one last chance" to "succeed." Certainly, the panel's proposed gradual pullback of fifteen U.S. combat brigades by early 2008 is a welcome alternative to the neocons' and Administration's failed and delusional policies. But there is no hard deadline attached to the recommendations; furthermore, the Iraq Study Group envisions keeping at least 70,000 troops in Iraq for the long term--maintaining a lower-visibility occupation rather than ending it. Even worse, it recommends "embedding" U.S. troops with Iraqi units; in an environment where Iraqi army and police are increasingly identified with sectarian militias, this risks making U.S. troops direct participants in Iraq's civil war--and what retired Lieut. Col. Ralph Peters called "hostages in uniform."
“Combat troops out by 2008 sounds great,” said Kevin Martin executive director of Peace Action, “but if they are only to be replaced by large numbers of U.S. special forces, rapid reaction teams, military trainers, advisors and intelligence operatives, as the plan suggests, nothing will have been gained. Even with its few good suggestions regarding international diplomacy and national reconciliation, this is not a plan to end the war, but rather one to turn it into a more manageable long term occupation – occupation lite, if you will.”
Phyllis Bennis of Institute for Policy Studies described the report saying: “Despite the breathless hype, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG) report did not include any dramatic new ideas for ending the war in Iraq. In fact, it did not include a call to end the war at all. Rather, the report’s recommendations focus on transforming the U.S. occupation of Iraq into a long-term, sustainable, off-the-front-page occupation with a lower rate of U.S. casualties. Despite its title, it does not provide ‘A New Approach: A Way Forward.’”
http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=12695
Mideast press sceptical over Baker report
Iraqi papers argue that only Iraqis themselves can define their country's fate, while the Iranian press stresses the importance of neighbouring countries in solving the crisis.
In Israel, commentators are split between those who see the report's benefits and those who view its pitfalls, particularly those linked to Israel's relations with its neighbours.
In marked contrast, a Palestinian paper believes the panel's recommendation on the Mid-East peace process forms its most important conclusion. But a Lebanese title doubts that Iran and Syria will give the US the help it needs.
ALI KHLAYF IN IRAQ'S SHIA AL-ADALAH
International conferences cannot decide the fate of the political process in Iraq. Rather, Iraqis, who have made immense sacrifices for the political process, can alone determine the fate of their country and draw up its policies.
IRAQ'S AL-DUSTUR
A change cannot happen in isolation from the Iraqi national will. The Americans are incapable of making a change outside the framework of Iraqi national interest which is defined by the Iraqis rather than any other party.
UK-BASED PAN-ARAB AL-QUDS AL-ARABI
The Baker report is valuable as it is the first time that the failure of the US occupation in Iraq has been clearly acknowledged, as well as the danger of US troops remaining in Iraq in the light of the deteriorating situation and the escalation of killings among the Iraqis and the occupation forces.
IRAN'S REFORMIST E'TEMAD-E MELLI
In the long term there is no solution to keeping Iraq secure except by cooperation with Iraq's neighbours.
IRAN'S CONSERVATIVE RESALAT
We are witnessing a movement started in the region by the Islamic Republic of Iran to remove the flows of intrusion and occupation in the region. The recent incidents in Lebanon in addition to what is happening in Iraq prove that the people in the region want to cleanse the Middle East of foreigners' interference.
MOTTY ZAFT IN ISRAEL'S NATIONAL RELIGIOUS PARTY HATZOFE
With all due respect to old Baker, President Bush junior's perception of his position as leader of the strongest superpower in the world is the polar opposite of the report's view... If Bush accepts the report in full it would be a mighty turnaround in US policy, a thing it does not seem he will do.
SHMUEL ROSNER IN ISRAEL'S LEFT-OF-CENTRE HA'ARETZ
The Baker Report undermines everything Bush and his aides believed in, everything they have declared in recent years. The question is how they will neutralize the clauses that bother them without angering a public thirsty for new solutions.
ORLY AZULAY IN ISRAEL'S CENTRIST YEDIOT AHARONOT
If Bush adopts the report he will benefit both American interests and Israeli interests. If he decides to throw the recommendations in the bin, he will be like a man who points a gun at his forehead and pulls the trigger.
AKIVA ELDAR IN ISRAEL'S HA'ARETZ
It is difficult to believe that Baker really expects that this couple [Prime Minister Olmert and Defence Minister Peretz], who are incapable of evacuating a single outpost, will convince the public to give up the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, to dismantle settlements and evacuate citizens from their homes.
ARIK BACHAR IN ISRAEL'S CENTRE-RIGHT MA'ARIV
Israel offered a down payment for solving the Palestinian problem more than a year ago with the withdrawal from Gaza. In return it got the excitable Hamas, with rockets that are turning the western Negev into a firing range. We would have expected from an experienced mediator like Baker that he would not just take the easy route to find a solution.
HERB KEINON IN JERUSALEM POST
After the Madrid diplomatic process was ditched in favour of concentrating on the Palestinian track in the hope that solving this problem would be the key to everything else, Baker is back with recommendations for a regional conference. It's Madrid redux.
PALESTINIAN AL-QUDS
What was interesting for us as Palestinians was the conclusion that to make Iraq a safe place and get it out of the spiral of violence, suffering and division, the Middle East conflict should be solved. This was the panel's most important conclusion.
ABD AL-HAMID SWAYLIM PALESTINIAN AL-AYYAM
There is an almost clear unanimity that US policy has failed in creating the democratic model it was dreaming of and heralded. This was the moral criterion for its occupation policy in Iraq. The US failure is military, political and economic.
RAFIQ KHURI IN LEBANON'S AL-ANWAR
It is not realistic to imagine that the adversaries of America invited to dialogue will voluntarily give it what it needs to realize its objectives, especially after the great and resounding US failure in Iraq.
LEBANON'S ARAB NATIONALIST AL-NAHAR
President George Bush is still speaking about progress in Iraq and insisting on achieving the mission, as he waits for a report by the US security services that may save him from the Baker-Hamilton Report.
EGYPT'S PRO-GOVT AL-JUMHURIYAH
This admission [that the US is not winning in Iraq] from the new boss in the Pentagon, although it came late, represents a sound basis for changing the strategy in Iraq to guarantee a quick and safe pullout for US forces in response to the demands of the majority of Americans and the Iraqi people, who have priority in deciding their destiny and future.
JORDAN'S INDEPENDENT AL-DUSTUR
What is important is to realize the importance of gradual change in the US decision-making that may decide in the end to merge Iran to be part of the solution in Iraq instead of being part of the problem. This requires an Arab political readiness to face all consequences that may result from this US tendency.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6216936.stm
TUM DII DAI DII, TUM CHUA DAI CHUA!
THA T
IS
ALL!
Iran Reacts Favorably to the Baker-Hamilton Plan
While the White House remains wary of the proposal to talk with Iran, Tehran sources tell TIME that the regime believes such talks are in the country's best interest.
The Iranian government has responded more positively than the Bush Administration has to the Iraq Study Group's proposal for talks between the two. And government sources in Tehran tell TIME that this reflects a sincere and calculated desire among the Iranian leadership for improved relations with Washington
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1568431,00.html
Iraqi leader criticises US report.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has criticised some of the main findings of a high-level US report calling for a change of strategy in Iraq.
Speaking at his Baghdad residence, Mr Talabani said: "I think that the Baker-Hamilton report is not fair and not just, and it contains dangerous articles which undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and its constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6165943.stm
Kurds Reject US Study Group's Report
In a strongly worded statement, the president of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region rejected in its entirety the report by the Iraq Study Group, and threatened that Kurds would opt for secession from Iraq should Washington try to implement some of the key recommendations of the report regarding Kirkuk, federalism and the constitution.
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/salih.php?articleid=10137
Israel rejects Iraq study ideas
Israel has rejected claims by a team of elder US statesmen that the Iraq crisis cannot be resolved unless the US also tackles the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Mr Olmert said Syria first would need to break ties with Israel's arch-foe Iran, and with anti-Israeli militant groups in Lebanon and the occupied territories.
"I don't think there is a Syrian desire for war with us. We certainly don't have a desire to fight with them. That doesn't mean conditions ripe for us to negotiate with them," Mr Olmert told an annual gathering of Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv.
Policy priority
James Baker and Lee Hamilon's bipartisan ISG report says: "The US will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the US deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."
It recommends directly involving Israel, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians in talks at the earliest opportunity.
The BBC's Matthew Price in Jerusalem says it is no surprise that the Israeli prime minister disagreed with the ISG assessment.
Israel knows President George W Bush's foreign policy priority is Iraq and it does not want its greatest ally to start seeing it as part of the problem, he adds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6217656.stm
Reactions to the long-awaited Iraq Study Group report
We randomly sampled the web by using Copernic Agent – a software that uses keywords and brings up matches found from all possible website accessible to it at any given time. The keywords were "Baker-Hamilton" and "Comment" and the search was limited to websites originating within USA. Seven hundred results came up and we randomly selected 30 (the fourth of each displayed result). When the site was a list of comments on an article about the report the fourth in the list of comments was sampled.
President Bush said: “The thing I liked about the Baker-Hamilton report is it discussed the way forward in Iraq. And I believe we need a new approach.” “I understand how hard it is to prevail. But I also want the American people to understand that, if we were to fail -- and one way to assure failure is just to quit -- is not to adjust and say it's just not worth it. If we were to fail, that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future.”
“If the president is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi
“The president has the ball in his court now ... and we're going to be watching very closely,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said the key question now is whether President George W. Bush will effectively implement a new policy. “We need the White House to become the ‘Iraq Results Group.’”
Senator Barak Obama (D-IL) said it's time for change, “In presenting a realistic view of how far the situation has deteriorated, the report avoids the partisan rhetoric that has characterized too much of this debate and offers a unique chance to forge a bipartisan consensus about how to move forward in Iraq.”
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Hamilton and Baker that he does not believe their approach will work taking issue with that approach, saying he did not agree with the Baker-Hamilton group's conclusion that the U.S. military does not have enough forces available to sustain a troop boost in Iraq. “There's only one thing worse than an over-stressed army and marine corps, and that's a defeated army and marine corps. I believe this is a recipe that will lead to our defeat sooner or later in Iraq.”
Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich), the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “The report represents another blow at the policy of 'stay-the-course' that this administration has followed. Hopefully, this will be the end of that stay-the-course policy." Levin. Referring to Democrats' election victory in November, he said, "the American people rose up against staying the course in Iraq, because it was not working."
Representative John P. Murtha (D-PA), whose call for withdrawal touched off a firestorm last year, complained that the panel offered a prescription “no different from the current policy” and called for quicker and more “decisive” action: “Staying in Iraq is not an option politically, militarily or fiscally.”
Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-founder of the Out of Iraq Caucus, “I agree with them totally, that -- and they’re saying it loud and clear -- it’s a mess. The occupation is a mess, and we need a political solution. We also need to reach out regionally to the other leaders in the region. And they -- imagine, they have to tell the President of the United States to reach out to other leaders around the world? But they’re doing it. Let’s hope he pays attention to them. I, like Barbara Lee, disagree with a timeline that adds 12 to 18 months to this occupation, because, you see, all we’re doing when we’re there is making everything worse. It’s getting worse every single day that we’re in Iraq.” She concluded: “I hope the people of this country aren’t lulled by this report, because, you see, it’s way too late. This is too little, too late to start, all of a sudden, realizing we’ve got a disaster in Iraq.”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), said “The American public did not vote for the Iraq Study Group. They voted for a new congress and a new direction in Iraq - - out. Many who voted for change will be surprised to learn some who oppose the war will continue to fund it, in the name of supporting the troops in the field.”
Military
Retired General Barry McCaffrey, who fought during the 1991 Gulf War, said “They came up with a political thought but then got to tinkering with tactical ideas that in my view don't make any sense. This is a recipe for national humiliation.”
Jack Keane, the retired acting Army chief of staff who served on the group’s panel of military advisers, described that goal of removing combat troops by Spring 2008 as entirely impractical. “Based on where we are now we can’t get there,” General Keane said in an interview, adding that the report’s conclusions say more about “the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”
“The new Iraqi Army will need years to become equal to the challenge posed by a persistent insurgency and terrorist threat,” Lt. Col. Carl D. Grunow, a former military adviser, wrote in a recent issue of Military Review, a journal published by the United States Army.
“There is no meaningful plan for creating a mix of effective Iraqi military forces, police forces, governance and criminal justice system at any point in the near future, much less by 2008,” noted Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the group’s study.
Defense expert Andrew Krepinevich, whose counter-insurgency theory formed the basis of the U.S. and Iraqi crackdown in Baghdad code-named Operation Together Forward, told Reuters "The idea ... is a good one (but) this will likely lead to an increase in U.S. casualties.”
Iraqi and Middle East Reaction
“I don't care about the report,” said Ahmed Rafii, a taxi driver from Falluja. “I didn't follow it and didn't hear about it. The Americans came for the oil and they are going to stay as long as the oil is there.”
“The situation is grave, very grave in fact, and cannot be tolerated,” Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said Wednesday on the pan Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya, he warned that improving the battlefield capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces would not be “the magic wand that brings a solution in one day.”
A prominent Kurdish lawmaker, Mahmoud Othman, criticized the panel for failing to include Iraqis, saying the “report was written in the first place to generate agreement among the Americans.” Further, “It seems those who wrote it have little knowledge about the situation in Iraq. They only visited the Green Zone for some days, they did not go to the south or to Kurdistan to ask the people there. This is the reason why their outcome and recommendations are superficial and inaccurate.”
Khalid Abdel-Rahim, a Sunni Arab employee of the Industry Ministry said “U.S. officials have long discussed training more Iraqi troops, but they have not been able to control widespread attacks by insurgents and militias. ... I don't expect this latest report will solve our problems.”
Hadi Muhsin, the Shia owner of a stationery shop in Baghdad, said: ''This report comes after the deaths of tens thousands of Iraqis. It doesn't recommend the total withdrawal of U.S. forces or set a timetable. ... I don't think this report will bring positive change. We don't even know if President Bush will follow it.''
Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, echoed Saleh's comment that the report's recommendations were ''positive on the whole.'' He told The Associated Press they conformed with the government's own plans to deal with the rampant violence engulfing the country since 2003.''The parts I read were very positive,'' he said.
Sheik Mohammed Bashar al-Fayadh, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni Arab group said the recommendations gave precedence to U.S. interests over Iraq's and sought ''guarantees for an exit (from Iraq) but without paying heed to preventing a civil war from breaking out. The report recommends the training of Iraqi forces, but will it reach the level of the American army? The answer is 'no.' If the American army is unable to settle the question and get out of this predicament, so how can that be?”
Commentators, Advocacy Groups and Think Tanks
William Kristol, the neocon editor of The Weekly Standard and a member of the Project for a New American Century called the report “a disguised surrender,” “The real recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study group is 'stay the course.' For this we waited nine months?” He added about President Bush: “Right now we can only applaud the president's courage and determination and his willingness to resist the pressures of those who would now sound the retreat.”
Frederick Kagen of the American Enterprise Institute writes “The reason: The report basically punts on the most important issue of the day--establishing security in Iraq. All of the pious exhortations to get Iraqis to sit down with one another, to engage Iran and Syria and to find political compromises are meaningless if we are unable to stem the tide of bloodshed that now engulfs much of Baghdad and Anbar province. Yet the Baker Report devotes scant space (eight pages out of 56 in the proposals section) to the security problem and its recommendations are unoriginal: Increase the number of American soldiers embedded in Iraqi units as trainers by stripping them out of the combat brigades now working to fight insurgents.”
The Center for American Progress’s Lawrence Korb and Max Bergamann urge adoption of the report, writing the report “closely replicates the plan that the Center for American Progress first released in September 2005 called “Strategic Redeployment,” offers a new, pragmatic approach to the war in Iraq and worsening crises across the Middle East—one that even its authors concede may not stave off defeat, but that still presents realistic options in the face of a deteriorating set of circumstances.”
Anthony Arnove author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal “Well, I think the report offers only a slight correction of course for a policy that needs fundamental reversal. We need to bring the troops home, not to talk about prolonging the presence of the United States in Iraq. This report of the Iraq Study Group lays out keeping troops, not only combat troops, in Iraq until 2008, but well beyond that . . . it continues a policy that the Bush administration has put forward, of we will stand down as the Iraqis stand up . . . as long as US troops are there, the US troops will be a source of instability and will fuel sectarian conflict, rather than dampen it.”
The Nation Magazine editorializes: Democrats should not cede their popular mandate to the murky consensus of the Baker-Hamilton report, which equivocates on the alternative to prolonged war--speaking of "one last chance" to "succeed." Certainly, the panel's proposed gradual pullback of fifteen U.S. combat brigades by early 2008 is a welcome alternative to the neocons' and Administration's failed and delusional policies. But there is no hard deadline attached to the recommendations; furthermore, the Iraq Study Group envisions keeping at least 70,000 troops in Iraq for the long term--maintaining a lower-visibility occupation rather than ending it. Even worse, it recommends "embedding" U.S. troops with Iraqi units; in an environment where Iraqi army and police are increasingly identified with sectarian militias, this risks making U.S. troops direct participants in Iraq's civil war--and what retired Lieut. Col. Ralph Peters called "hostages in uniform."
“Combat troops out by 2008 sounds great,” said Kevin Martin executive director of Peace Action, “but if they are only to be replaced by large numbers of U.S. special forces, rapid reaction teams, military trainers, advisors and intelligence operatives, as the plan suggests, nothing will have been gained. Even with its few good suggestions regarding international diplomacy and national reconciliation, this is not a plan to end the war, but rather one to turn it into a more manageable long term occupation – occupation lite, if you will.”
Phyllis Bennis of Institute for Policy Studies described the report saying: “Despite the breathless hype, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG) report did not include any dramatic new ideas for ending the war in Iraq. In fact, it did not include a call to end the war at all. Rather, the report’s recommendations focus on transforming the U.S. occupation of Iraq into a long-term, sustainable, off-the-front-page occupation with a lower rate of U.S. casualties. Despite its title, it does not provide ‘A New Approach: A Way Forward.’”
http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=12695
Mideast press sceptical over Baker report
Iraqi papers argue that only Iraqis themselves can define their country's fate, while the Iranian press stresses the importance of neighbouring countries in solving the crisis.
In Israel, commentators are split between those who see the report's benefits and those who view its pitfalls, particularly those linked to Israel's relations with its neighbours.
In marked contrast, a Palestinian paper believes the panel's recommendation on the Mid-East peace process forms its most important conclusion. But a Lebanese title doubts that Iran and Syria will give the US the help it needs.
ALI KHLAYF IN IRAQ'S SHIA AL-ADALAH
International conferences cannot decide the fate of the political process in Iraq. Rather, Iraqis, who have made immense sacrifices for the political process, can alone determine the fate of their country and draw up its policies.
IRAQ'S AL-DUSTUR
A change cannot happen in isolation from the Iraqi national will. The Americans are incapable of making a change outside the framework of Iraqi national interest which is defined by the Iraqis rather than any other party.
UK-BASED PAN-ARAB AL-QUDS AL-ARABI
The Baker report is valuable as it is the first time that the failure of the US occupation in Iraq has been clearly acknowledged, as well as the danger of US troops remaining in Iraq in the light of the deteriorating situation and the escalation of killings among the Iraqis and the occupation forces.
IRAN'S REFORMIST E'TEMAD-E MELLI
In the long term there is no solution to keeping Iraq secure except by cooperation with Iraq's neighbours.
IRAN'S CONSERVATIVE RESALAT
We are witnessing a movement started in the region by the Islamic Republic of Iran to remove the flows of intrusion and occupation in the region. The recent incidents in Lebanon in addition to what is happening in Iraq prove that the people in the region want to cleanse the Middle East of foreigners' interference.
MOTTY ZAFT IN ISRAEL'S NATIONAL RELIGIOUS PARTY HATZOFE
With all due respect to old Baker, President Bush junior's perception of his position as leader of the strongest superpower in the world is the polar opposite of the report's view... If Bush accepts the report in full it would be a mighty turnaround in US policy, a thing it does not seem he will do.
SHMUEL ROSNER IN ISRAEL'S LEFT-OF-CENTRE HA'ARETZ
The Baker Report undermines everything Bush and his aides believed in, everything they have declared in recent years. The question is how they will neutralize the clauses that bother them without angering a public thirsty for new solutions.
ORLY AZULAY IN ISRAEL'S CENTRIST YEDIOT AHARONOT
If Bush adopts the report he will benefit both American interests and Israeli interests. If he decides to throw the recommendations in the bin, he will be like a man who points a gun at his forehead and pulls the trigger.
AKIVA ELDAR IN ISRAEL'S HA'ARETZ
It is difficult to believe that Baker really expects that this couple [Prime Minister Olmert and Defence Minister Peretz], who are incapable of evacuating a single outpost, will convince the public to give up the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, to dismantle settlements and evacuate citizens from their homes.
ARIK BACHAR IN ISRAEL'S CENTRE-RIGHT MA'ARIV
Israel offered a down payment for solving the Palestinian problem more than a year ago with the withdrawal from Gaza. In return it got the excitable Hamas, with rockets that are turning the western Negev into a firing range. We would have expected from an experienced mediator like Baker that he would not just take the easy route to find a solution.
HERB KEINON IN JERUSALEM POST
After the Madrid diplomatic process was ditched in favour of concentrating on the Palestinian track in the hope that solving this problem would be the key to everything else, Baker is back with recommendations for a regional conference. It's Madrid redux.
PALESTINIAN AL-QUDS
What was interesting for us as Palestinians was the conclusion that to make Iraq a safe place and get it out of the spiral of violence, suffering and division, the Middle East conflict should be solved. This was the panel's most important conclusion.
ABD AL-HAMID SWAYLIM PALESTINIAN AL-AYYAM
There is an almost clear unanimity that US policy has failed in creating the democratic model it was dreaming of and heralded. This was the moral criterion for its occupation policy in Iraq. The US failure is military, political and economic.
RAFIQ KHURI IN LEBANON'S AL-ANWAR
It is not realistic to imagine that the adversaries of America invited to dialogue will voluntarily give it what it needs to realize its objectives, especially after the great and resounding US failure in Iraq.
LEBANON'S ARAB NATIONALIST AL-NAHAR
President George Bush is still speaking about progress in Iraq and insisting on achieving the mission, as he waits for a report by the US security services that may save him from the Baker-Hamilton Report.
EGYPT'S PRO-GOVT AL-JUMHURIYAH
This admission [that the US is not winning in Iraq] from the new boss in the Pentagon, although it came late, represents a sound basis for changing the strategy in Iraq to guarantee a quick and safe pullout for US forces in response to the demands of the majority of Americans and the Iraqi people, who have priority in deciding their destiny and future.
JORDAN'S INDEPENDENT AL-DUSTUR
What is important is to realize the importance of gradual change in the US decision-making that may decide in the end to merge Iran to be part of the solution in Iraq instead of being part of the problem. This requires an Arab political readiness to face all consequences that may result from this US tendency.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6216936.stm
TUM DII DAI DII, TUM CHUA DAI CHUA!
THA T
IS
ALL!
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 10 2006, 04:13 PM)
The Iraq study group and the completely discredited neo-con war for profit is what we were discussing, but that is only the beginning. Driven by public demand, more and more of Bush's lies, corruption and stupidity will be revealed by Congressional investigations, leading to only one conclusion - impeachment. The United States Constitution requires the removal of criminals like Bush and Cheney from public office.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Impeachm...coast_1210.html
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Impeachm...coast_1210.html
Impeachment of the Bush and Cheney crime families will be driven by compliance with law and the Constitution as well as by public demand.
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 11 2006, 02:52 AM)
Impeachment of the Bush and Cheney crime families will be driven by compliance with law and the Constitution as well as by public demand.
TUM DII DAI DII, TUM CHUA DAI CHUA!
THA T
IS
ALL!
"This tendency to weasel is emblematic of the (Bush) administration's signature failing: a lack of respect bordering on scorn for objective fact and verifiable truth."
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1210-27.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1210-27.htm
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 10 2006, 09:13 AM)
The Iraq study group and the completely discredited neo-con war for profit is what we were discussing, but that is only the beginning. Driven by public demand, more and more of Bush's lies, corruption and stupidity will be revealed by Congressional investigations, leading to only one conclusion - impeachment. The United States Constitution requires the removal of criminals like Bush and Cheney from public office.
Ok, Roadster lets have a discussion about this. Lets start with your proof that Bush is a liar....................
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 10 2006, 04:13 PM)
The Iraq study group and the completely discredited neo-con war for profit is what we were discussing, but that is only the beginning. Driven by public demand, more and more of Bush's lies, corruption and stupidity will be revealed by Congressional investigations, leading to only one conclusion - impeachment. The United States Constitution requires the removal of criminals like Bush and Cheney from public office.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Impeachm...coast_1210.html
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Impeachm...coast_1210.html
This is not a partisan issue.
"If America is a nation of laws and not of men, the US Constitution calls for, at minimum, a full investigation of possible negligent and criminal activities of President Bush and others in the Bush administration."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120906C.shtml
"Along with his grim vision of an open-ended global war, Bush added his usual mix of false history and faulty logic to fan the fears of Americans. Back, for instance, was Bush's old canard about how the 9/11 attacks ended American complacency that the two oceans protected the country from attack, a belief that actually disappeared more than half a century ago with the advent of Soviet nuclear missiles."
"In other words, Bush still insists on living in a world of ideology and made-up facts, not one of reality and pragmatism. Bush has fixed his mind on what his neoconservative advisors sold him on in 2001 -- and he can't break with that."
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/45304/
And you can't find words of your own either D2. Always a link. I knew you were demented but now I also know you ain't too Fn bright...............
QUOTE (Nomad @ Dec 11 2006, 02:09 AM)
Ok, Roadster lets have a discussion about this. Lets start with your proof that Bush is a liar....................
Nomad, I suspect you would not acknowledge the evidence if it jumped up and bit you in the face. So these links aren't really for you. They're for others who might actually make the effort to read and understand their content, and who are capable of making an intelligent comment or two on a real issue, as opposed to avoiding it by trying to discredit the messenger.
http://www.failureisimpossible.com/needtoknow/lies.htm
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushlies.htm
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 11 2006, 11:54 AM)
Nomad, I suspect you would not acknowledge the evidence if it jumped up and bit you in the face. So these links aren't really for you. They're for others who might actually make the effort to read and understand their content, and who are capable of making an intelligent comment or two on a real issue, as opposed to avoiding it by trying to discredit the messenger.
http://www.failureisimpossible.com/needtoknow/lies.htm
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushlies.htm
http://www.failureisimpossible.com/needtoknow/lies.htm
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushlies.htm
Hey, Roadkill, I read your link’s disguises of repatriated regurgitations from perhaps only 10 or so original thought venues of regular haranguer as to Bush, Iraq and or Neo-con thought. Venues that repeatedly are but re-embodiments of supposition, saying lies, those, dirty lies. Proverbial witticism of that entrepreneur, cottage Industry, of disquieted elitists and haranguing opportunists making money off the religious zealotry of you Conspiracy buffs .As is so well exampled in the supreme opportunist, Reverend AL, Tawana, Sharpton, the pontificate of congregational Conspiracy zealots, "Why do they lie? Because they're liars!"
Can you layout specific charges and cite the specific chapter and version in the laws of the nation that would be applicable for Bush and Cheney, as these harangues copulate in what seems to be preference for their conjoining law breaking impeachments.
Now for a more clear view of what these writers mean;
The Clarity of Liberalism??
TUM DII DAI DII, TUM CHUA DAI CHUA!
THA T
IS
ALL!
QUOTE (Nomad @ Dec 11 2006, 02:57 AM)
And you can't find words of your own either D2. Always a link. I knew you were demented but now I also know you ain't too Fn bright...............
I can find plenty of my own words. But you already know my opinion. George Bush is a criminal, a liar and a self-serving demagog. He couldn't "stay the course" because Bush the puppet and the thugs pulling his strings never had a course. Bush is far too crooked and ignorant to have had a viable plan for post-invasion recovery and reconstruction. The Iraq war was an invasion masquerading as democracy and liberation that quickly became an occupation of cruelty and counterproductive torture. Bush is the worst president in US history and the Iraq invasion is one of the worst foreign policy blunders in modern history.
But in the links there is information far more influential and widely read than anything I could say.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121206J.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121206H.shtml
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/121106.html
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 10 2006, 09:54 PM)
Nomad, I suspect you would not acknowledge the evidence if it jumped up and bit you in the face. So these links aren't really for you.
You are quite right Roadster. And there is a simple reason for that...................................
I am not a delusional emotional idiot.
QUOTE (ustrader @ Dec 11 2006, 06:36 PM)
Hey, Roadkill,
Can you layout specific charges and cite the specific chapter and version in the laws of the nation that would be applicable for Bush and Cheney, as these harangues copulate in what seems to be preference for their conjoining law breaking impeachments.
Can you layout specific charges and cite the specific chapter and version in the laws of the nation that would be applicable for Bush and Cheney, as these harangues copulate in what seems to be preference for their conjoining law breaking impeachments.
We won't be holding our breath for an answer here........................
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 12 2006, 03:09 PM)
I can find plenty of my own words. But you already know my opinion. George Bush is a criminal, a liar and a self-serving demagog.
K, now back it up with your own words. Surely you can think for yourself, can't you?
Lets start with a law that Bush broke.......
The year-end review of the worst lies told by Bush & Co.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
and...
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
http://www.republicansforhumility.com/outrage.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
and...
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
http://www.republicansforhumility.com/outrage.html
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 24 2006, 03:01 AM)
The year-end review of the worst lies told by Bush & Co.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
and...
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
http://www.republicansforhumility.com/outrage.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
and...
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
http://www.republicansforhumility.com/outrage.html
And...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6423.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3971.htm
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?op...pper&Itemid=182
QUOTE (Roadster @ Dec 23 2006, 08:01 PM)
The year-end review of the worst lies told by Bush & Co.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
and...
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
http://www.republicansforhumility.com/outrage.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/
and...
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
http://www.republicansforhumility.com/outrage.html
And where are your words?? Are you so mindless as to let others think and speak for you??
QUOTE (Nomad @ Dec 24 2006, 12:19 PM)
And where are your words?? Are you so mindless as to let others think and speak for you??
Why yes my friend Road Kill and D2d2 are Siamese twins in that respect, always thoughtless regurgitaors of other's mindlessness.
QUOTE
“What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, or originality by them, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is enough.”-- Eugene Delacroix
QUOTE (ustrader @ Dec 23 2006, 10:29 PM)
Why yes my friend Road Kill and D2d2 are Siamese twins in that respect, always thoughtless regurgitaors of other's mindlessness.
Actually I believe they are one and the same. Both always posting links with little or no comment. And what's really a hoot occasionally conversing with each other.
This is one bunch of sick personalities.............
QUOTE (Nomad @ Dec 27 2006, 04:26 AM)
Actually I believe they are one and the same. Both always posting links with little or no comment. And what's really a hoot occasionally conversing with each other. This is one bunch of sick personalities.............
This is one bunch of sick personalities............. Why don't you ask a moderator, if any still exist here, to run an IP search?
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 27 2006, 01:12 PM)
Why don't you ask a moderator, if any still exist here, to run an IP search?
P.S. Being the SAME as in alike, is NOT mutually exclusive, as in being different in reality, for as is similar, a duck of a cluck is but a cluck of duck, eh comrade
QUOTE
The similar condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits they oppose; it is, thereby, in this similarity of their double think, that justifies, in a way, their similar actions that lie inside the limits of what they assume is only absolutely acceptable. That being foremost, that which must be similar to them! -TRADER
Happy Trails buckeroo!!!
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 28 2006, 12:55 AM)
D2D2, You do see clearly the problem with regurgitating the thoughts of others, through the emptiness between ones left ear and right ear, as you and Road kill, do all the time, is that the echo that reforms off the mirrored images inside that great hollowness, come out as the same, used over and over again.
Yet, as is obvious by the repetitiveness, without either’s awareness that is repeated stupor made of the same yammer for 6 years. Yet still unknowing, that neither is but exactly where they were when they started, only repeating others in transparent inadequacies to find a voice of their own.
QUOTE
The Communalist mindset, An echo, asking a shadow to dance, in a soundless room and a perpetual fog of ambiguity, always assuming substance, but clearly lacking any.-TRADER
QUOTE
Lies;
We prefer them so often, sometimes we do not even realize when we hear the truth and it is a lie or we hear a lie and it is the truth?
Lies;
Some tell them so often, we, much less they, often do not even know, what to believe or who to believe.
Lies;
Because of them or perhaps even despite them, we doubt truth and honesty, as if it cannot be.
Lies;
Because we know not of them, as either truth or lies, we assume the worst and forsake the best, convicting all, the innocent and the guilty alike, just to be right.
Lies;
We seem readily accepting lies as truth, and equally readily accepting, truth as lies.
Until that is we find out, that in life, as we desire, lies become truths and truths become lies, and it is, more often, we, that decide, not the lies or truths, as to which one is real to the other.
Lies;
Nevertheless, by then, in our determined decide, when the reality of it all is self evident, the issue has passed and what we are to do or not do becomes inconsequential and meaningless, as it is too late.
--TRADER
We prefer them so often, sometimes we do not even realize when we hear the truth and it is a lie or we hear a lie and it is the truth?
Lies;
Some tell them so often, we, much less they, often do not even know, what to believe or who to believe.
Lies;
Because of them or perhaps even despite them, we doubt truth and honesty, as if it cannot be.
Lies;
Because we know not of them, as either truth or lies, we assume the worst and forsake the best, convicting all, the innocent and the guilty alike, just to be right.
Lies;
We seem readily accepting lies as truth, and equally readily accepting, truth as lies.
Until that is we find out, that in life, as we desire, lies become truths and truths become lies, and it is, more often, we, that decide, not the lies or truths, as to which one is real to the other.
Lies;
Nevertheless, by then, in our determined decide, when the reality of it all is self evident, the issue has passed and what we are to do or not do becomes inconsequential and meaningless, as it is too late.
--TRADER
Home sweet Home!!
TUM DII DAI DII, TUM CHUA DAI CHUA!
THA T
IS
ALL!
Former President Ford knew the Iraq invasion was a mistake.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward...sh_on_1228.html
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hardball-Ford-Iraq.wmv
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward...sh_on_1228.html
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hardball-Ford-Iraq.wmv
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 29 2006, 07:27 AM)
Former President Ford knew the Iraq invasion was a mistake.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward...sh_on_1228.html
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward...sh_on_1228.html
Minor but a huge distinction in what he said as opposed as to how our resident limp biscuits regurgitated with modification as to what he said, which is in their very link.
Girls, it does pay to have more than a 30 sec attentive span, when one uses facts leaving the contextual substance of those facts un attended and unnoticed.
Ford said;
QUOTE
Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.
In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error IN HOW they SHOULD JUSTIFY what they were going to do."
In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error IN HOW they SHOULD JUSTIFY what they were going to do."
Something afar from him disagreeing with their going to war in Iraq, but, instead, as stated, he disagreed on the issue of how they justified going to war in Iraq and said he may not have done it or perhaps would have not done it the same way.
Report: Ford 'very strongly' against Iraq war justification
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...aq_x.htm?csp=34
Ford: Bush made 'big mistake' on Iraq justifications
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/27/for...tion=cnn_latest
President George W. Bush and his top advisers made a "big mistake" in their justification for invading Iraq
The real story is not in the late presidents opinion on how the administration justified the war in Iraq, or if he would have done the same or not, for all that changes nothing that is not already in the works to be changed.
The real story sadly, is that within hours, not days of the man's death, before he is even buried, he is USED as Bable hyped agenda in a media created event. Hyped by the multitude of media bable-ists in their normalcy of hypersonic competitiveness as if they were building the fabled Tower of Bable.
It is a shame that people with such blind ambitions of competitive zealotry will use a good man before he is even put into the ground, in a political media game of "I'm right and you or he or they are wrong". Which changes nothing, that was not already set in motion to begin with.
Yet, Ford's death becomes a tool of agenda, not in meaning of his existence but in meaning of others desires for existence.
Oddly, they who would build this second fabled Tower of Bable, as recited in the Christian and Jews teachings and even those of Islam, in Sura 2:102 mentions the name of Babil, but gives few additional details about it. However, the tale appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut (i, 448 f.) and the Lisan el-'Arab (xiii. 72), but without the tower: mankind were swept together by winds into the plain that was afterwards called "Babil", where they were assigned their separate languages by Allah, and were then scattered.
Again in the same way, perhaps in the end, comes the towers second victims of blind ambitions and self- righteousness, assuming omnipotence, yet having none like the original builders of the tower of Babel, destined to be scattered into babbling groups of incoherencies.
Ford's legacy, a Thai perspective...
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/12/29...on_30022808.php
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Dec 28 2006, 06:27 PM)
Former President Ford knew the Iraq invasion was a mistake.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward...sh_on_1228.html
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hardball-Ford-Iraq.wmv
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward...sh_on_1228.html
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hardball-Ford-Iraq.wmv
QUOTE
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
Sounds as though it was the selected justification that he saw as a mistake. MARK
"...neocon propagandists lied about Saddam's nuclear program and WMD and Iraq ties to al-Qaeda, anthrax attacks, and 9/11." Pat Buchanan
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10333
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10333
QUOTE (d2d2 @ Jan 16 2007, 10:25 PM)
"...neocon propagandists lied about Saddam's nuclear program and WMD and Iraq ties to al-Qaeda, anthrax attacks, and 9/11." Pat Buchanan
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10333
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10333
The article states, accurately, fairly balanced and in honestly, something D2d2 is far from in his Americanize linquist of others in unaudable originality, says far less than was said in those narrow alley ways of bellowing hanagues he copies so unorginally.
QUOTE
We are there because a Democratic Senate voted to give Bush a blank check for war. Democrats in October 2002 wanted the war vote behind them so they could go home and campaign as pro-war patriots.
And because they did, 3,000 Americans are dead, 25,000 are wounded, perhaps 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, 1.6 million have fled, $400 billion has been lost and America stands on the precipice of the worst strategic defeat in her history.
Yet, Sens. Clinton, Biden, Kerry and Edwards -- all of whom voted to give Bush his blank check -- are now competing to succeed him. And how do they justify what they did?
"If only we had known then what we know now," they plead, "we would never have voted for the war." They are thus confessing to dereliction in the highest duty the Founding Fathers gave Congress. They voted to cede to a president their power to take us to war.
Now they wash their hands of it all and say, "It's Bush's War!"
And now George Bush has another war in mind.
Bush's contempt for Congress is manifest and, frankly, justified.
In paraphase. Iran we shall go, Hi ho the merry go, off to Iran we shall go???...
And because they did, 3,000 Americans are dead, 25,000 are wounded, perhaps 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, 1.6 million have fled, $400 billion has been lost and America stands on the precipice of the worst strategic defeat in her history.
Yet, Sens. Clinton, Biden, Kerry and Edwards -- all of whom voted to give Bush his blank check -- are now competing to succeed him. And how do they justify what they did?
"If only we had known then what we know now," they plead, "we would never have voted for the war." They are thus confessing to dereliction in the highest duty the Founding Fathers gave Congress. They voted to cede to a president their power to take us to war.
Now they wash their hands of it all and say, "It's Bush's War!"
And now George Bush has another war in mind.
Bush's contempt for Congress is manifest and, frankly, justified.
In paraphase. Iran we shall go, Hi ho the merry go, off to Iran we shall go???...
Enter Rep. Walter Jones, Republican of North Carolina.
The day after Bush's threat to Iran, Jones introduced a Joint Resolution, "Concerning the Use of Military Force by the United States Against Iran." Under HJR 14, "Absent a national emergency created by attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories, possessions or its armed forces, the president shall consult with Congress, and receive specific authorization pursuant to law from Congress, prior to initiating any use of force on Iran."
Jones' resolution further declares, "No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran."
If we are going to war on Iran, Jones is saying, we must follow the Constitution and Congress must authorize it.
If Biden, Kerry, Clinton and Obama refuse to sign on to the Jones resolution, they will be silently conceding that Bush indeed does have the power to start a war on Iran. And America should pay no further attention to the Democrats' wailing about being misled on the Iraq war.
Then we have what you call a Mexican Standoff, a non-binding Joint Resolution if it can ven get passed, having no legal nor consitutional status and Congresses and the Presidents embedded War Powers visa via the Consitution, the War Powers Act of 1973 (Public Law 93-148) whicn limits the power of the President of the United States to wage war without the approval of Congress. The War Powers Act of 1973 is also referred to as the War Powers Resolution (Sec. 1).
The purpose of the War Powers Resolution is to ensure that Congress and the President share in making decisions that may get the U.S. involved in hostilities.( An issue yet to be legally challenged as Congres impedding on the power of the Presidency)
Portions of the War Powers Resolution require the President to consult( meaning in Ambiguity unclear nor implicitedly implied) with Congress prior to the start of any hostilities as well as regularly until U.S. armed forces are no longer engaged in hostilities (Sec. 3); and to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities if Congress has not declared war or passed a resolution authorizing the use of force within 60 days (Sec. 5( b )). Following an official request by the President to Congress, the time limit can be extended by an additional 30 days (presumably when "unavoidable military necessity" requires additional action for a safe withdrawal).
Then we have the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601-1651) is a United States federal law passed in 1976 to stop open-ended states of national emergency and formalize Congressional checks and balances on Presidential emergency powers. The act sets a limit of two years on states of national emergency.
There remain underlying questions about its constitutionality (though not a formal declaration of war) consistent with the provisions of the resolution. The reports to Congress required of the President have been drafted to state that they are "consistent with" the War Powers Resolution rather than "pursuant to" so as to take into account the Presidential position that the Resolution is unconstitutional.
One argument for the unconstitutionality of the War Powers Resolution — Philip Bobbitt's in "War Powers: An Essay on John Hart Ely's War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath," Michigan Law Quarterly 92, no. 6 (May 1994): 1364–1400 — runs as follows: "The power to make war is not an enumerated power" and the notion that to "declare" war is to "commence" war is a "contemporary textual preconception"; the Framers of the Constitution believed that statutory authorization was the route by which the United States would be committed to war, and that 'declaration' was meant for only total wars, as shown by the history of the Quasi-War with France (1798–1800); in general, constitutional powers are not so much separated as "linked and sequenced"; Congress's control over the armed forces is "structured" by appropriation, while the president commands; thus the act of declaring war should not be fetishized. (Bobbitt, the nephew of Lyndon Johnson, also argues that "A democracy cannot… tolerate secret policies" because they undermine the legitimacy of governmental action.)
A second constitutionality argument concerns a possible breach of the 'separation of powers' doctrine. The legislature may be impeding the executive in carrying-out the Oath of Office. "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability; preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." (US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 8) This type of constitutional controversy is similar to one that occurred under President Andrew Johnson with the Tenure of Office Act (1867). In that instance, the Legislative branch attempted to control the removal of Executive branch officers.
On December 20th, 2005, ABC News reported that vice-president Dick Cheney had described the War Powers Resolution as an "infringement on the authority of the president."
War Powers Clause, the United States Constitution, Article One, Section 8, Clause 11, vests in the Congress the exclusive power to declare war.
But Article II, Section 2 provides that "The president shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." While it's clear that the Framers intended for Congress alone to declare war, presidents don't always check with Congress before acting. After President Harry Truman bypassed Congress to go to war in Korea, presidents have paid almost no attention to the constitutional requirements.
In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to obtain either a declaration of war or a resolution authorizing the use of force from Congress within 60 days of initiating hostilities. Its constitutionality has never been tested as Congress has always passed the required authorization when requested by the president.
Some legal scholars maintain that all military action taken without a Congressional declaration of war (regardless of the War Powers Resolution) is unconstitutional; however, the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the matter.
There is also much debate about the meaning of the word "declare." Some scholars suggest that to declare war does not necessarily mean to commence war. During the Philadelphia Convention, there was some discussion about the difference between the power to "make war" and the power to "declare war," and which of the two should be written into the Constitution. A declaration of war lets the citizens of a nation know that they are now at war with some other nation or entity. It also puts the belligerent nations and their citizens on notice. More importantly, this establishes that international law governs the conduct of the war. This protects citizens in all the warring nations involved insofar as if they are captured by the enemy, they will be treated as prisoners-of-war instead of mere criminals
Impeach you say?
Biden sputters that should Bush attack Iran, a constitutional crisis would ensue.
[I]I don't believe it. If tomorrow Bush took out Iran's nuclear facilities, would a Senate that lacks the courage to cut funds for an unpopular war really impeach him for denying a nuclear capability to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Bush's lawyers would make the same case Nixon made for the 1970 "incursion" into Cambodia -- and even a Nixon-hating Democratic House did not dare to impeach him for that, says Buchann.
http://www.theamericancause.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
AND BEAT GOES ON!!!
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