Newshoggers Comments
"AQI is hardly even the bulk of the problem - it never was" says who? Tell that to the Shi'ite community in Samarra as their Golden Dome mosque was destroyed.
You're pretty glib on the Middle East, despite having been wrong very often in your posts.
That Syrian "munitions warehouse" out in the middle of nowhere next to the Euphrates where the stored weapons could be "cooled off," seems to have been much ado about nothing?
You seem very eager to adopt the loo-zing argument and even appear to wish the Coalition be in the loo-zing side.
Hi Dave,
Funny thing - the Iraqis themselves don't think AQI were behind the Samarra bombings. They think it was an inside sectarian job. That's well documented if you care to Google it and for an "expert" like you to ignore it means your ignoring is deliberate.
Oh, and the Box On The Euphrates wasn't in the middle of nowhere. it's visible from one of Syria's main tourist attractions.
Have you volunteered to quit retirement for FSO duty in the Green Zone yet? Please don't, we need some actual competence in the State Dept. and you aren't it.
Regards, C
You wrote: "Ethnic cleansing by force and by people simply getting up and leaving ... have far more of a role to play."
As much as i can see this is the real baghdad security plan (US and Maliki). Do you remember the 2005 Newsweek piece about the salvadorian option?
Forget all about the "surge". This was only window-dressing to buy time in the USA. Remember Mao: Dry the water! Make the life of people who resist unbearable! The real policy is the "purge".
There's also the intertribal fighting between the two major Shiite factions ahead. And the war with Turkey.
And the matter about Sunnis getting a share of the oil profits (scarce in their regions) has never gained the consent of the Shia majority ruling the government. And the coronation of Ahmad Chalabbi as the new puppet strongman.
There's lots of gore left. The Shias backed off US troops because that's the only way they'll ever be gone, under Bush: a lull in the killing.
"it's visible from one of Syria's main tourist attractions." Halabiyya itself is not one of "Syria's main tourist attractions," though I doubt if you'd know what those attractions are. Halabiyya would be something like Fort Ticonderoga, hardly a major tourist attraction in the USA. But I don't think you ever make statements about the Middle East without exaggerating.
"the Iraqis themselves don't think AQI were behind the Samarra bombings"
Uh, I googled the site per your recommendation and your dishonest characterization is apparent. Here's the nutshell:
"Although Al-Qaeda in Iraq denied any involvement in statements released, in June 2006, it was reported that Iraqi commandos and troops had captured and seriously wounded Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, a Tunisian also known as Abu Qudama al-Tunesi, after he and 15 other foreign fighters stormed an Iraqi checkpoint 25 miles north of Baghdad, according to Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie.
Abu Qudama confessed to taking part in the attack on al-Askari mosque in Samarra and gave a detailed account of how the attack took place. Al-Rubaie said Iraqi security forces have yet to capture the mastermind of the mosque attack, Haitham al-Badri, an Iraqi and leader of one of Al Qaeda in Iraq's cells. Al-Rubaie said al-Badri, Abu Qudama, four Saudi nationals and two other Iraqis stormed the mosque Feb. 21, rounded up the shrine's guards, members of Iraq's Facility Protection Service, and bound their hands. The group then spent the rest of the night rigging the mosque with bombs. At dawn the next day, they detonated the explosives, bringing down the dome.[11]
In an August 2006 press conference U.S. President George W. Bush stated "it's pretty clear – at least the evidence indicates – that the bombing of the shrine was an Al Qaida plot, all intending to create sectarian violence."[12] Before his death, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi listed among his goals the incitement of a civil war between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis.[13]"
So elements of Al-Qaeda did confess to doing the demolition of the Samarra Mosque.
And given your dishonesty and mischaracterizations of facts, I regard your negative comments about me as COMPLIMENTS!!! Thank you and keep them coming!!
It's tough when you've spent so much time cheering on terrorist murderers to see them lose.
Dave,
"Halabiyya would be something like Fort Ticonderoga, hardly a major tourist attraction in the USA." But it's not "in the middle of nowhere", is it? There's plenty of habitation nearby. So your exaggeration is the relevant one.
On Samarra, why is it we should believe AQ when they talk of a Caliphate but not when they deny responsibility for this attack?
"The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency. Frank "Greg" Ford, a retired counterintelligence agent for the Army Reserves, who worked with the Army in Samara before the 2006 bombing, says that the evidence points away from AQI and toward a different conclusion: "The Baathists directed that attack," says Ford".
The second bombing in 2007 had, it appears, plenty of inside involvement - 15 policemen were arrested. It's not AQI just becuase you, or the US military, says it is.
Regards, C
Bandit, I refer you to Libby's answer. Now go away and play with your action figures.
Regards, C
Actually, Cernig, that part of Syria is sort of like northern Idaho. The "habitation" are Shell oil installations and supporting infrastructure. You simply parrot other know-nothings & try to get away with silly diversions. I've been to Palmyra & the Syrian Desert. It's a barren waste for the most part.
Let's see.... You say AQ didn't blow up the mosque...I point out the confessions in quotes....you quote a Scott Beauchamp wannabe....[Tilghman is a defrocked Stars & Striper trying to "make it" like John Kerry did---telling lies about war zones.]
Which journalism school did you flunk out of?
And why do you so desperately cling to your wish that the US & UK lose in Iraq? Could it be that you are projecting your "loo-zer" mentality onto symbols of strength to bring them DOWN to your miserable level?
Dave,
You're talking more crap to cover up the crap you originally spouted about it being in the middle of nowhere. Shell? And the guys from Shell didn't mention this nuke plant going up in 2001 or take pics or anything? Dave, Dr Jeffrey Lewis is a real expert and he has pics of the local towns and villages. Oh - and pics of another big boxy building just 5 miles away in a secure compound.
Let's see - I say AQI wasn't the biggest problem since even the US military says it was only at most 8-15% of the insurgency. You talk about one particular incident over which there are legitimate questions and which sparked a whole slew of ethnic killing which definitely wasnt done by AQI. Do you think AQI forced those Interior Ministry death squads to do their stuff?
I know who the flunker here is - you. Why did you wash out of State, Dave? Because you were so blindly partisan you kept getting it all wrong? Or were you just a very junior flunkey - a file clerk pretending to more than he is?
Your continued insult that I want the US and UK to lose is beneath contempt. I just don't want you rightwingers to haul the US and UK off on another mistaken angle when the dangers of your current triumphalism are staring you and the Iraqi people in the face.
Regards, C
Hmm.... As I said before, I regard your uninformed gibberish and your insults both symptoms of a second-rate ink-stained loo-zer. Your ad-hominem response shows you have been outed as a disciple of Robert Fisk, another loo-zer whose journalism is that of a cartoonist in black&white. And I welcome insults from agitpreppie airheads.
Your ignorance about the way the world works, and your comment that Shell would have taken "pics" or "mention" this, which of course would have queered their whole operation in eastern Syria. If you think Shell spies for MI6 or the CIA, that would be evidence of more cartoons in that empty uninformed place between your ears. Shell is a primarily Dutch company, not a shill for the UK.
And this "talk about one particular incident over which there are legitimate questions and which sparked a whole slew of ethnic killing which definitely wasnt done by AQI." is sheer nonsense that flies in the face of what you yourself wrote above---something about Iraqis believing the Samarra mosque was by their own people. You are artfully dodging the confession of an AQ leader that Zarqawi was aiming at igniting sectarian strife.
"Experts" like Jeffrey Lewis still haven't explained why the site bombed by the Israelis has been completely smoothed over and flattened----coincidentally the same procedure the Iranians followed when a major nuke facility of theirs was unmasked and presto! the entire facility disappeared and the site was smoothed over just as the Syrian site was. Hmmm....
An investigative reporter would wonder at that "coincidence," among many others such as Saddam exporting weapons during the First Gulf War [I was covering that for a daily newspaper in between jobs at major oil firms].
Oh, as for "washing out" and "junior officer," if you actually check my blogsite, you'll find that State invested lots of money in teaching me Vietnamese, French, Arabic----and offered me a year of Russian at Garmisch-Partekirchen & a year of Uzbeki in London as preparation for being the First Consul General in Tashkent---if SALT II passed. [Even a RFisk loo-zer like yourself may know it didn't] Instead I was offered Russian language & a political section job in Moscow---hardly a junior clerk position.
Around that time, I was offered a job back in Saudi paying triple my State salary plus incentives---so much for "washing out."
And while you disgrace yourself peddling half-truths and lies about the US/UK, I'm enjoying a prosperous retirement.
Have a good time avoiding examining your conscience [/sarc]
Ah Dave, your blinkers do you proud. Look back over our conversations and you'll see the first to reach for ad hominems and insults is always you.
Regards, C
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