Turkish Planes Pound Iraqi North;
Condi: Iraq is Hard
Turkish war planes pounded northern Iraq on Monday, seeking to punish members of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) who are implicated in bombings and other attacks inside Turkey.
Secretary of State Condi Rice said Monday that the Iraq War has been "harder, longer, and more difficult than I personally imagined" and she warned that victory is not assured.
Condi waited until political and financial stories were sure to drown out her comments, which stand as a stark indictment of her boss and his policies in Iraq. They also point to the dangers in having ignorant but cocky leaders like herself.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has decided to seek a strong "united" government, offending Kurds who are committed to the soft partition of Iraq or even eventual Kurdish statehood. Al-Maliki's stance puts him at odds with Joe Biden, who argues for a weak federal Iraq.
US oil majors hoping to develop Iraq's petroleum should take a lesson from Nigeria, argues AP. Factional violence in the latter country has made the offshore operations the most practical ones.
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/07/2008 01:24:00 AM
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9 Comments:
I think that something big is going to happen with all these banks going down :(
It's good to hear about Iraq again. The news itself is never good, but it gets almost no attention elsewhere.
I have to take on faith that al Maliki is seeking a strong "united" government, but if it is true it means he has adopted the Sadrist point of view and that is good for Iraq and the Iraqis. At least that is how it seems to me.
Like Condi Rice, Maliki, too, seems to have waited for general panic to ensue over "more important matters" before dropping this bombshell.
Sen. Bob Kerry speaks before unanimous Senate passage of the Iraq Liberation Act -- Oct. 7, 1998:
“This bill, when passed and signed into law, is a clear commitment to a U.S. policy replacing the Saddam Hussein regime and replacing it with a transition to democracy. This bill is a statement that America refuses to coexist with a regime which has used chemical weapons on its own citizens and on neighboring countries, which has invaded its neighbors twice without provocation, which has still not accounted for its atrocities committed in Kuwait, which has fired ballistic missiles into the cities of three of its neighbors, which is attempting to develop nuclear and biological weapons, and which has brutalized and terrorized its own citizens for thirty years. I don’t see how any democratic country could accept the existence of such a regime, but this bill says America will not. I will be an even prouder American when the refusal, and commitment to materially help the Iraqi resistance, are U.S. policy.”
As a Turk I can now truly tell you that America is NOT fighting a war on terror and if the world believes they are they are fooled. In the last 2 years our country has seen about at least 100 soldiers. That is a huge amount for a country not at war. And for the last 2 years America has promised aid, intelligence, and cooperation to crack down on the PKK, a terrorist organization according to the US and NATO. Well if you really are fighting a war on Terror president Bush, why not fight one of the terrorist organizations in Iraq. The PKK is not on the other side of the world where American troops are not present. They are IN Iraq, where the US Armed Forces are present. If you really are fighting a War on Terror you would be at least attempting to show the same fight you do against AlQaeda to the PKK. Just like the US government and army the Iraqi government has done nothing to avert this threat. I think if nobody else is going to do anything about it then the Turkish Armed Forces should have every right to go into Iraq and end this terrorist organization. Didn't the US troops come from another continent to fight "terrorists" in Iraq?u
U.S. Secretary of State Rice : “success in Iraq is "not a sure thing."”
What is interesting about this statement is that it is literally true. And by writing that what i am saying is that "success", the concept of the word itself ~ remains undefined by the Secretary... or by anyone else, Over There or Over Here, for that matter.
"success" = something we have not yet achieved-?
"success" = something achieved but not enduring-?
"success" = no opposition to Western military occupation & commodity wealth extraction-?
"success" = the U.S. media metric of no American KIA+WIA, whatsoever-?
"success" = that notion of nation, ‘IRAQ’ incorporates all Shi'ite-, Sunni- and Kurdish-identity peoples ~ as existed before the American invasion; e.g., under the Unitary Executive ruler, Saddam Hussein-?
"success" = a ‘bailout plan’ for the American military, whose most precious assets ~ its assault troops ~ sit now frozen behind the blast-proof walls of their GreenZone and FOB banks; illiquid: incapable of being deployed (or even withdrawn) without casualty="failure" ~ yet day-by-day losing "value", just sitting there in this hideous daily drip, drip attrition, this Stasis Of Forces-?
indeed: "success", quite literally ~ is not a sure thing, yet, is it?
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has decided to seek a strong "united" government, offending Kurds who are committed to the soft partition of Iraq or even eventual Kurdish statehood... I was unable to track down an English version on www.azzaman.com, but this seems to be of a piece with al-Maliki's sending Iraqi troops into Kurdish-controlled Khanaqin a month ago, and something that al-Maliki could be carrying on in league with his SIIC friends (leaving Muqtada on the sidelines). Cf Peter Galbraith's article "Is This a 'Victory'?" in the Oct 23, 2008 New York Review.
Winding up a visit to Iraq that has taken him to six provinces, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said that American and Iraqi negotiators were "close" to resolving the issues that have stood in the way of a security agreement governing the continued presence of American Occupation troops in the country.
In negotiating the Status of Forces Agreement ( SOFA ), the US has agreed to withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of Iraq by the end of 2011, assuming that conditions in the country remain stable.
Iran, meanwhile, stepped up pressure against the proposed agreement, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telling a visiting Iraqi official on Tuesday that Iraq had "a duty" to resist the Americans.
America Continues To Twist Iraq's Arm While Holding A Gun To Iraq's Head
1. What if shadowy unknown actors / groups continue to 'destabilize' Iraq? Then the amerikans stay - wot a co-winky-dink.
2. Everybody but the usa, including Iran, has screwed up strategically.
2a) Iran sidelined al-Sadr in the hope that if his militia stopped killing amerikans, then the amerikans would leave. Wrong.
2b) The Iranians stopped supplying 'goodies' to anti-occupation Shi'ite Freedom Fighters in the hope that if they stopped blowing the amerikans up, then the amerikans would leave. Wrong.
3) The Sunnis stopped killing amerikans, accepted bribe $$$ from the amerikans, in the hope that the Sunnis could outwait the amerikans and the amerikans would leave. Wrong.
What has everybody but the amerikans forgotten ???
the OIL beneath Iraq.
the amerikans are never ever going to leave Iraq and the Oil behind unless forced out at the end of a gun barrel.
If the Iraqis had stuck together, regardless of religion / tribal affiliation etc and kept on killing amerikans, the American Sheeple would have finally woken up ( as they were starting to until 'the surge' put the lid on things and the media stopped all reporting from and on Iraq and the Occupation just fell off the news pages ) and demanded withdrawal.
The North Vietnamese learned this lesson the hard way - they had to fight and expel the Chinese, the Japanese, the French and the Americans. They never ever stopped fighting and never ever stopped killing in the effort to free their country of colonialists and occupiers.
The Iraqis, whether Sunni or Shia, have screwed up and are now going to have under the repressive yoke of the Oil Stealing amerikan occupiers.
i do not see what Iran can do about the situation. and i do not see a white knight ( such as Russia or China ) coming to Iraq's aid unless the Iraqis pay in Oil.
Lesson - If you have Oil, you had better have Nuclear Weapons with which to protect that Oil and keep the amerikans from stealing.
The 'more difficult than expected' schtick from Condi isn't new. I cut and pasted a few juicy Condi quotes last December:
Rice said, "This war came to us, no the other way around."
Iraq is “worth the investment” in American lives and dollars and said the U.S. can still win a conflict that has been more difficult than she expected.
"If I had to do it all over again, we would have had the balance between center, local and provincial better. But that's the kind of thing you learn over time."
More at http://cascadaobserver.blogspot.com/2007/12/denial-and-deception.html
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