Bomb hits entrance to Green Zone, 20 dead

I hate to give in to abject pessimism, but I cannot see any good ending to situation. Nor can I see an acceptable avenue out for the U.S. These are all reasons millions of people protested the starting of this war; since Scrub & Co. were smarter than everyone else at that time, we can only hope they are still smarter than everyone and have some brilliant ace up their custom-tailored sleeves.

Since that’s not likely, I hope the rest of America is finally paying attention and will vote accordingly in November. And NO CHEATING THIS TIME.

Don’t worry Chris, our administration says “Bring it on” and they apparently are extremely confident they have a solution to this mess. Pro-war advocates that I’ve spoken with seam to think that the problem is not ours, it is the people of Iraq. Those people are so stupid, don’t you think? Indeed. We Americans are the smart ones, we burned their house down, what more could you possibly ask for? Is it up to us to claim accountability for the burning? Surely not, it’s their problem now. Is the world safer because of it? Of course it must be. I feel safer, don’t you?

We should stay until the country has ‘one-man and one-woman’, one-vote Democracy, no matter what the costs or duration. Or until a certain few U.S. corporations, and a certain few Iraqi ‘expatriates’, have bilked all they wish out of the deal. Or until the U.N. and ‘Old Europe’ apologize for questioning the voracity of the Bush and Blair governments. Or until we find WMDs and win the ‘Global War on Terrorism’.

Or whatever Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Richard Pearlman think is best, or choose to tell Mr. Bush they think is best. They’ve been right about everything so far, and if you can’t trust them, who can you trust?

It ends when the US public decides it has spent too much money (not to mention the blood) on the whole thing - the looming double deficit should bring that realisation about rather quickly. Then: US troops retreat (except for a few strong bases to guarantee future US power in the region), no matter how shitty the situation on the ground is. More chaos and anarchy for the middle east. The blame lies of course with the ones who did not properly support the US in their heroic attempts at ridding the world of all terrorism for all time. The US will suffer the consequences of its reckless and unilateralist behavior for the next 10 to 20 years. The new superpower, China or India, repeats the cycle. Nuclear mini-weapons are an established part of the ‘art’ of war. Not a whimper but a bang. (/rant)

Honestly, the only solution that I can think of is to first get a lasting peace in Israel. Putting economic pressure, real economic pressure on Israel to pull out and provide security for Palestinians as they set up their own state, probably back to the 1967 borders will help relieve the tension. Iraqis and Palestinians and Arabs in the region need to see some “impartiality” on the part of the US before they will accept that what we are doing isnt part of some “zionist” plot. Both situations, Iraq and Israel-Palestine, are awful examples of the current Administrations failures with foreign policy. I suppose you can add Northern Ireland to that list as well. I think the peace there is going to collapse back into violence unless we help get a government set up.

Or maybe not. Who knows?

Here is what one pair of Iraqi imams (one sunni and one shia) told me today about the bombing: “they are crazy people, they will accomplish nothing but make the good iraqi people look bad. If we Iraqis wanted to get rid of the 100,000 Americans we millions of Iraqis could do it like that (then snapped his fingers, while the shia imam mentioned sistanis help to the Americans). The American need to show more respect and help us lift our country up and every Iraqi will fight the terrorists because they will be fighting for iraq, so no one can say they are collaborating with the americans. Inshallah it will end soon”

That ladies and gentelman, while not eloquent is the situation in a nuanced nutshell…..

SGT Omar Masry

Baghdad International Airport, Iraq

Lol - you promised democracy and that’s what the Shia want, when they get it you’ll be asked to leave and take your bases with you.

The reality is that it’s extremely patronising to even think you have any right to decide anything about how an ex a sovreign nation will choose to organise itself.

There are only two simple choices:

Stay and die until you eventually get tired of dying and leave anyway.

Leave and live and let the poor Iraqi’s sort themselves out in their own way, in much the way the US shook off it’s imperial overlord and organised it’s own system.

Sgt. Masry: With all respect, I must point out that those “millions of Iraqis” did not rid themselves of Saddam Hussein in over two decades - so were they amenable to THAT regime?

We have been unwise to invade and occupy Iraq, in my estimation…but the Iraqis being encouraged to war with Iran and using chemical weapons, and then invading Kuwait and, meanwhile, allowing hundreds of thousands of their own people to be murdered, imprisoned and tortured by their own government, hardly suggests the insurgents now operating in the country have the market cornered on either “crazy” or making “the good Iraqi people look bad.”

The people of Iraq are obviously quite divided on many very fundamental issues, and the problems there obviously extend well beyond the current occupation by foriegn troops or the actions of a relatively small group of militant radicals to try and force them out. I can’t see how your imans

have cast any more revealing a light or provided any more compelling or even sensible a notion of solution, than the administration of the U.S. government. Which is to say, nada.

Show WHO more respect, and by DOING WHAT, exactly? Help LIFT IRAQ UP in what ways, by what actions and at what costs? And how shall we measure our success, and at what point will the measure meet WHICH standards, set by WHOM and

agreed upon by WHO and HOW MANY, verified by WHAT?

I have been against the Iraqi adventure from the get-go…but if we haven’t ALREADY provided a viable opportuity for the ‘good’ people of Iraq to stand up, it may have to be acknowledged that we aren’t capable of providing it. That wasn’t our goal, in the first place - and that wasn’t the motivation behind acceptance of invasion by the American public. That wasn’t what the U.S. administration was prepared for. They did not have anything approaching fact-based information or a rational plan for executing such an accomplishment. They only had willfulness, arrogance and some whacky, overreaching notions about transforming the Middle East. The continuing shifts, wobblings and spin apparent in the administration’s proclaimations and errant assessments, have made that painfully clear to anyone not living in serious denial.

I suggest that your imans need to look somewhere else for a solution - and they might want to start with themselves.

‘Can someone please tell me how this ends?’

VOG says: “sure, in 100 years your time, I’ll tell you”.

What do you mean by an ‘end’? Can I assume that you mean an end to the seemingly mindless indiscriminate bombing mayhem in Iraq? Based on your reports and other sources (Salam Pax and more) I don’t forsee a peaceful solution any time soon (5 years or so).

Unless the shiites get their wish and successfully clobber the competition and are able to implement a religious government ala Iran.

As pointed out by ‘xxx’ be careful what we wish for, ‘democracy’ in Iraq, if implemented in the current cultural environment won’t last.

I suspect our government would be happier with a friendly dictatorship (ala Pakistan) than a real democracy. You don’t hear the Bush administration criticising Russia for their steps away from democracy do you?

Fasten your seat-belt, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Or as Bush stupidly said: ‘Bring ‘em on’.

We have chosen a difficult and long road. I see no innocent countries involved in this mess. Nothing has worked since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Balfour, Sikes-Picot, British rule, Israel’s independence, numerous arab-israeli wars, champions of peace that have begged assassination, Gulf I.

The war is not about oil. It is a dangerous and strategic calculation to turn the entire region around. If we did nothing blood would be shed (we’ve been in a war for over ten years folks, took two tries to bring down WTC). We need the UN in some capacity. My opinion is biased, but from personal experience working with the organization in Africa (2x), it is inept, corrupt, and mis-managed. There is no real solution to the Israeli problem. That state is paranoid and treats the Palestinians brutally. And you know what? If they didn’t, the majority of Israelis would be dead or treading water in the Mediterranean. It would not matter if Sharon and Arafat were golf buddies, there are enough extremists on both sides that screw the deal. We will see Israel make some concessions, but there will always be many that want the state destroyed.

Please don’t forget, as our so called allies have, that we faced suicide bombers sixty years ago. We did institute a government based on our constitution, and the Japanese have survived fairly well.

Yes, the situations are markedly different, but what would we have thought had we lived at that time? That was a war between nations, not countries. Total war. Other than Gen. Marshall and a few other optimists, who could have foreseen the success of Japan and Europe.

We are not perfect. We have made mistakes. There is no easy solution. I deeply hope that Mr. Bush has/can set in motion a plan (might take twenty years or more) to institute fundamental change in this region.

Guess what? If you give a generation of people the right to vote, basic human rights, better equality of and treatment of women, education, etc., they may just find a seat at the table of nations.

If we do nothing now, the cost will be much greater down the road. Alas, it is difficult to free slaves from the chains they worship.

Making the rounds of GI e-mail traffic in Iraq these days is the following inspiring missive. It is reproduced below in its entirety and exactly as written by Karl Nielson LT, CHC, USNR

13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Chaplain:

Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1:

The first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty (~60,000 Iraqis providing security to citizens). They will receive weapons by June 2004.

Nearly all of Iraq’s 400 courts are functioning and 24 judges have passed the American bar.

The Coalition approved Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.

Power generation hit 4,518 megawatts for one day in October exceeding prewar output.

All 22 Universities & 43 technical institutes/colleges are open and most of them have teachers.

Nearly all primary and secondary schools are open for at least ninety minutes a day.

Coalition has “rehabbed” 1,500+ schools (500 ahead of schedule) and many of them have roofs and electricity.

Teachers earn from 12-25 times their former salaries.

All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open and 10% have running water.

Hoosiers has opened its first restaurant in Bagdad.

Doctors salaries are at least 8 times what they were under Saddam.

Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from almost zero to 12,000 tons and Prozac has been made available for free.

Five Wallmarts are set to go up in the main cities of Iraq.

Coalition has cleared 14,000+km of Iraq’s 27,000km of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created 100,000+ jobs for Iraqi men & women.

Three golf courses have been built.

Coalition has restored over 3/4 of prewar telephone services and 2/3+ of potable water production.

4,900+ full-service telephone connections (~50,000 by year-end).

Commerce is expanding rapidly (bicycles, satellite dishes, cars, RV vehicles, etc) in all major cities and towns.

95% of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily and receiving a free toaster.

Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.

Iraq has one of the world’s most growth-oriented investment and banking laws. The Bagdad Stock Exchange opened stimulating a blossoming business in speculation.

Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years. Despite many demands from monetory authorities Vice-President Dick Cheney turned down requests to allow his picture to be used on the currency.

Satellite TV dishes are legal.

Foreign journalists are not on “10-day visas” paying mandatory fees to the Ministry of Information for minders. There is no such Ministry.

There are 170+ newspapers. The first issue of Playboy was published.

Plans have been approved to open 45 McDonalds restaurants.

Iraqi Chambers of commerce, businesses, schools and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.

Over 170,000 credit cards have been issued to qualified individuals.

For the first time in 35 years, in Karbala, thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.

Bloomingdales has been signed as the anchor store in the new Metro Bagdad Mall.

The Coalition has completed 13,000+ reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.

American businesses are making tremendous profits from the reconstruction to offset the expense and loss the United States suffered in the war.

Uday and Queasy are dead, and no longer feeding Iraqis to the zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq’s soccer players for losing games, or murdering critics.

Children aren’t imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.

Sesame Street and Barney, previously forbidden in Iraq, is now aired daily.

Political opponents aren’t imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.

Millions of long-suffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.

As a side effect, in neighboring countries, (1) Saudis will hold municipal elections, (2) Qatar will allow citizens to use credit cards which were formerly forbidden under Islamic law, (3)

Jordan has begun broadcasting American television programming; Friends, Sienfield, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, (4) through Coalition influence the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded (first time)

to an Iranian (Muslim woman) who speaks out for human rights/democracy & peace.

Saddam is gone.

Iraq is free.

Little or none of this information has been published by the Press Corps that prides itself on bringing you all the news that’s important. Iraq, under US lead control, has come further in six

months than Germany did in seven years or Japan did in nine years following WWII. Military deaths from fanatic Nazi’s and Japanese numbered in the thousands and continued for over three years after WWII victory was declared. It took the US over four months to clear away the twin tower debris, let alone attempt to build something else in its place.

Now, take into account that many people in our government and media continue to claim on a daily basis on national TV that this conflict has been a failure. Taking everything into consideration, even the unfortunate loss of our sons and daughters in this conflict, do you think any other country in the world could have accomplished as much as the United States and its coalition partners have in so short a period of time?

Credit cards in Qatar, Barney, Wal-Mart and McDonald in Iraq, shock waves of influence that penetrate the Nobel Prize commission; could a presumption of a universal relevence of “our” values be part of what’s wrong with the world?

Just wondering.

To Bailley:

IRAQ IS OCCUPIED - OCCUPIED BY UNWANTED FOREIGN TROOPS. IRAQ IS NOT FREE.

The US has destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure and has killed many thousands of Iraqis. The US has imposed criminal economic sanctions on the Iraqi people for over 13 years, thereby causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children.

The US has waged an illegal and immoral “pre-emptive war” on Iraq pretending that Iraq had WOMD. They lied!

The US has contaminated Iraq with its DU weapons, causing abnormally high levels of cancers in the population.

The US has appointed a “puppet Governing Council” in order to rule Iraq.

What Iraqi people want is democratic elections without the interference of any foreign states or power.

BEFORE your aggression the Iraqis had electricity, water, gas and fuel. These supplies have not yet been restored to pre-war level.

All you have brought to the Iraqi people is destruction and death.

So, you can keep your McDonald’s and your golf courses etc. for that it not what Iraqis need.

The US came to Iraq to control/steal its oil and to occupy a strategic place in the Middle East.

DOWN TO US IMPERIALISM.

P.S.: If your government really wants to find WOMD let them try ISRAEL.

Apparently SOME people forget it is now a ‘for us or against us’ world. And not just in Iraq…which they might have noticed if they had listened to the State of George’s World message last night. But what do you expect from a country where people don’t even know what a ‘Beanie Baby’ is, or the difference between a ‘Slurpee’ and an ‘Icee’?

George and his people have it all figured out, and everybody else needs to just shut up and do what they say, and everything will be fine.

It is non-patriotic, hate-America-first people, nations and organizations that don’t line up, insurgents, terrorists, the media, the ACLU, and liberal Democrats that are the problem. (Except the ACLU is doing o.k. on the Rush business.)

These people are so evil, some of them are willing to blow themselves up, just to make it appear the Bush administration doesn’t know what they’re doing. And THEY don’t rebuild the stuff THEY blow up, like the Bush administration does. And they WOULDN’T, even if they could get somebody else to pay for it and had some pals who could make a lot of money at it. Because they are evil, see? Then you have your others over there who don’t blow stuff up, but they don’t get how swell it will be when they have Barney and Bloomingdales and Playboy and McDonald’s…and so they want to throw a monkey wrench in things by insisting on elections which, if they only have three golf courses in the whole damn country, they obviously aren’t READY for. These people are only semi-evil, but they are STILL bucking the administration and are liable to become full-evil any minute and they MAY be already and are just ACTING semi-evil. It could be, in fact, that THEY are the ones with the WMDs, because we haven’t found those yet, and so they better WATCH it, because you are either FOR us, or AGAINST us.

How are we supposed to FREE them, when they keep wanting to do things THEIR way? It’s like saying you want McDonald’s, and then saying you want them to make you a goat cheese sandwhich

with a side of hummus. It doesn’t work like that.

You are either FOR McDonald’s or AGAINST it, and if you are AGAINST it, then you are looking for trouble, and that ought to be clear by now, but I’ll tell you for sure that once WALMART gets set up over there, they will by-god get it, because THOSE guys don’t mess around anymore than Bush, et al do. We got this little outfit called ‘Gannett’, too, and they’ll be right behind WALMART. Then we hit ‘em with Time-Warner-AOL, and Citibank. Harrah’s and Hooter’s. Those Iraqis don’t yet know the MEANING of the word: “OCCUPATION!”

They don’t seem to understand, either, that this is their opporutunity to get in on the ground floor of this deal. Whoever opens up those 45 McDonald’s in Iraq, has obviously got a leg up on getting a piece of the action in Afghanistan - where they REALLY don’t get it yet.

And once the whole Middle East is free………

But you gotta go along, to get along. For us, or against us. Keep it simple, stupid. Like that.

I hope this helps.

GO THEM

FUCK US

The assumption that war erases bad guys is flawed. Bad guys have children. Is the culure of Iraq one that believes revenge is essential?

Those who act against the ruling regime get executed, so for Iraq it is life as normal with Americans replacing Saddam.

What Sgt. Masry said.

Laughing out loud…..

thanks steve…

I have no idea what the point was of the post after mine was…..

Ironic though a bunch of car bombs you could train monkeys to do….didnt have any real effect on post war plans. An 80 something man in Najaf says something…not even a fatwa, and opens it to comprimise and Bremmer runs off to washington..

Thats the power of being respected and shrewd….

Really the bombings are part of a PR war. I mean, it’s pretty obvious; it’s like chumming for sharks.

Sometimes I think that it’s not just that the antiwar crowd wants to photograph the flag draped coffins coming home, but that they would gladly turn them over on the tarmac so they could photograph the remains.

But if this one incident provides you fodder to hem and haw about the gross failure to liberate Iraq, to aid and abet your preconceived notions at the expense of the truth, well, I say to you, whatever.

pull our troops out and nuke the place.. as long as there is islam, there is evil. nuke the fucking place!!! “long live president bush”

pull our troops out and nuke the place.. as long as there is islam, there is evil. nuke the fucking place!!! “long live president bush”

pull our troops out and nuke the place.. as long as there is islam, there is evil. nuke the fucking place!!! “long live president bush”

Kenny, you’re a moron.