Random Thoughts on the Murder of Margaret Hassan

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 22 2004 10:58 utc | 104

Negroponte’s death squad members?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 22 2004 13:18 utc | 106

Hawks push deep cuts in forces in Iraq
US soldier killed in Baghdad
US Marine dies of wounds after being shot by sniper in Falluja
Police chief and driver assassinated in Khalis
Two Turkish truck drivers killed in Iraq
South Iraq pipeline blast cuts oil flows
Israeli exports to Iraq totaled $3 million in January-September 2004, mostly consumer goods and defense products for the US military in the country…….
Israeli exports to Arab states up 53% in January-September to $135m
Bulgaria says won’t forgive Iraqi debt outright
Iraqi security forces find 12 bodies south of Baghdad
Members of ousted Iraqi regime may sue Bush administration in World Court for war crimes – chief of Hussein’s legal team

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 22 2004 15:39 utc | 108

Falluja U.S. Marines were conducting painstaking weapons searches in the Iraqi city of Falluja on Monday when they spotted a man with an AK-47 rifle on a nearby rooftop.
Armed only with a light weapon, he could never stand up to what they were about to unleash. But he was enough to distract Marines from a task that is key to stabilizing Falluja after a U.S.-led offensive crushed rebels controlling the Sunni Muslim city.
The angle of the rooftop could not quite accommodate the trajectory of a shoulder-launched Javelin missile so Marines fired the more direct, wire-guided TOW missile after a debate.
Then they fired hefty .50 caliber machinegun rounds at the rooftop, blew up a door and stormed a living room. It was an impressive display of firepower but they raided the wrong house.
When they finally made it to the pulverized rooftop with smoke still rising from the machinegun bullet holes, the man with one rifle they were seeking had escaped………
Marines hampered by security fears in Falluja
Iraq election may yet be postponed – Arab ministers

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 22 2004 18:56 utc | 110

Funny, I didn’t think wire-guided missiles were originally meant to shoot people, but something bigger, truck or light-armored tank. Of course, people hadn’t a 400+ bio military budget then, so things may have changed now that money is aplenty.
“Avineri wonders whether it is impossible for Saddam Hussein to stage a comeback. He cautions that it is “highly unlikely,” but adds, “stranger things have happened.”
If most of the guerrilla was planned by Saddam, then releasing him and replacing Allawi by the true head honcho may be the best way of eradicating the insurgents. Most will simply reenlist in Mukhabarat and Republican Guard and the attacks will sharply decrease. Of course, then the US Army would have to work with Saddam to deal with a strong Shia rebellion – but they have some experience with that, since 1991.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 22 2004 19:38 utc | 112

Michael Massing on Iraq coverage and the election
Good overview and background on media behaviour.

Posted by: b | Nov 22 2004 21:08 utc | 114

b
wonder also at entanglements. during the vietname war the ‘resource poor’ intelligence services widened their waterfron to accept some new funding from the heroin trade as clearly spelt out in the work of dr alfred mccoy in his ‘politics of heroin the cia & south east asia – he is an expert on extralegal financement of the cia. have seen him cited here – think he’s teaching in america. a very very good mind.
what i remember from his book was tthe immediate & total acceptance of this trade as a norma form of functionnement. the commencement too of the nugan hand bank, the BCCI & other forms of money laundering. wouldn’t be at all suprprised how deeply they may be involved in that trade
why kill a bird with one stone when you can use ten stoned
the knowledge that this crop would reach the kind of levels it is now is not a surprise & i just wonder in what ways the united states is involved in that development
think dr mccoy also an expert on the ‘school of americas’. will google & find out
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 22 2004 22:54 utc | 116

r’giap
Clandestine service involvement is very possible. The UK had the task to keep Afghanistan clear of opium. They didn´t even try.
The drug money will feed the new Taliban as well as US supporting governments in the other -stans. It´s a recipe for further disaster.
Also if US forces stay in Iraq for another year, expect some highly edicted GIs coming back to the States.

Posted by: b | Nov 22 2004 23:14 utc | 118

Bernhard: Frankly, I never personally thought Taliban Afghanistan was a failed state. One can argue it was before, or that Somalia has been for the latest 15 years. But the Talibans controlled the country and you probably could let your wallet on the street and find it the next day, thanks to the terror that reigned in the country. It wasn’t a failed state, just a totalitarian state of a very uncommon kind. Which doesn’t mean the country was necessarily better than before, or than it is now – though my personal distaste of religious ruling countries, I certainly won’t complain that this regime fell.
And indeed, since the drug route go through Iran (massively hit) then Turkey, to Europe, it’s pretty easy to imagine that Iraq is or will be heavily supplied with this nasty stuff. The Westerners and exiles there have much more money than the average junkie in Tehran or Ankara.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 22 2004 23:52 utc | 120

Interesting, depressing observations from Spencer Ackerman over at Iraq’d:
“NEXT STOP KIRKUK: Mosul is now in essence independent from the central government and at war with itself. Thanassis Cambanis of The Boston Globe recently observed that the real power in the city derives from “a constellation of groups–insurgents and Arab nationalists on the west bank of the Tigris River, Kurdish political parties and militia on the east bank, and Turkomen in pockets throughout the city.” (Thanks to Eric Umansky.) The stars do not happily exist in that constellation: Just today, a leading figure in the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars was assassinated in the city. The multiethnic Mosul, once considered a model city, is fast becoming Sarajevo.
“That won’t be anything compared to Kirkuk. As George Packer recently wrote, given the fervent and competing claims on Kirkuk, that city could truly be where the first shots of the Iraqi civil war are fired. (Though it could be contended that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war now, I’d argue that what’s been happening over the last several months has put Iraq more into the category of failed state–where the government exists largely on paper and various factions have consolidated control over competing centers of power–while the Hobbesian civil war is just over the horizon.) According to today’s edition of the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Azzaman, the battle lines are getting drawn in Kirkuk as we speak…:
Iraq’d

Posted by: Bea | Nov 23 2004 1:06 utc | 122

@STGUSA:
Thanks. The rhetoric sure does meet the reality over six miles of road.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 23 2004 2:40 utc | 124

The previous link was a link from an article by Kurt Nimmo, and the web site source of this article is neither promoted nor recommended by me. The reference is purely is relation the Straussians, their backing of greater Irael, and the ‘realities on the ground’.

Posted by: DM | Nov 24 2004 9:16 utc | 126