Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Mar 11, 2007 16:30:22 GMT 4
'Smart' rebels outstrip USTop American generals make shock admission as Iraq leader pleads with neighbouring countries to seal off their bordersPaul Beaver in Fort Lauderdale and Peter Beaumont, Sunday March 11, 2007, The Observer The US army is lagging behind Iraq's insurgents tactically in a war that senior officers say is the biggest challenge since Korea 50 years ago. The gloomy assessment at a conference in America last week came as senior US and Iraqi officials sat down yesterday with officials from Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in Baghdad to persuade Iraq's neighbours to help seal its borders against fighters, arms and money flowing in. During the conference the US, Iranian and Syrian delegations were reported to have had a 'lively exchange'. In a bleak analysis, senior officers described the fighters they were facing in Iraq and Afghanistan 'as smart, agile and cunning'. In Vietnam, the US was eventually defeated by a well-armed, closely directed and highly militarised society that had tanks, armoured vehicles and sources of both military production and outside procurement. What is more devastating now is that the world's only superpower is in danger of being driven back by a few tens of thousands of lightly armed irregulars, who have developed tactics capable of destroying multimillion-dollar vehicles and aircraft. By contrast, the US military is said to have been slow to respond to the challenges of fighting an insurgency. The senior officers described the insurgents as being able to adapt rapidly to exploit American rules of engagement and turn them against US forces, and quickly disseminate ways of destroying or disabling armoured vehicles. The military is also hampered in its attempts to break up insurgent groups because of their 'flat' command structure within collaborative networks of small groups, making it difficult to target any hierarchy within the insurgency. The remarks were made by senior US generals speaking at the Association of the US Army meeting at Fort Lauderdale in Florida and in conversations with The Observer. The generals view the 'war on terror' as the most important test of America's soldiers in 50 years. 'Iraq and Afghanistan are sucking up resources at a faster rate than we planned for,' one three-star general said. 'America's warriors need the latest technology to defeat an enemy who is smart, agile and cunning - things we did not expect of the Soviets.' Other officers said coalition rules of engagement were being used against the forces fighting the insurgency. 'They know when we can and cannot shoot, and use that against us,' said one officer, reflecting the comments of US soldiers in the field. Another said recent video footage of an ambush on a convoy, posted on the internet, was evidence that insurgents were filming incidents to teach other groups about American counter-measures. The concerns emerged as Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, issued a stern warning that unless Iraq's neighbours - including Iran and Syria - united to help to shut down the networks supplying both Sunni and Shia extremists, Iraq's sectarian bloodshed would engulf the Middle East. Speaking at the beginning of the conference of regional and international powers in Baghdad, Maliki warned: 'Iraq has become a front-line battlefield. It needs support in this battle, which not only threatens Iraq, but will also spill over to all countries in the region.' Shortly after he spoke, mortar shells landed near the conference site and a car bomb exploded in a Shia stronghold across the city. Maliki asked for help in stopping financial support, weapons smuggling and 'religious cover' for the relentless car bombings, killings and other attacks that have increasingly been inflicted on Iraq, as the minority Sunnis, who dominated the country under Saddam Hussein, have fought the Shia majority who now run the government. Terrorism, Maliki said, 'was an international epidemic, the price of which was being paid by the people of Iraq'. He also warned Syria and Iran not to use Iraq as a proxy battlefield against the US: 'Iraq does not accept that its territories and cities become a field where regional and international disputes are settled.' Maliki said he hoped that today's conference could be a 'turning point in supporting the government in facing this huge danger'. The one-day gathering is also seen as a chance for conversations on its fringe between Iran and the US over the deepening Iranian nuclear crisis - opening the way to end the 28-year diplomatic impasse between America and Iran since the US hostages crisis. The chief US delegate has left open the door for possible one-on-one exchanges about Iraq. Source : tinyurl.com/2lexsn
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Apr 7, 2007 8:55:15 GMT 4
Afghan president: I met with TalibanBy FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press WriterKABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time Friday he has met with Taliban militants in attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan, which is struggling to quell a rising insurgency. Karzai's assertion — immediately rejected as false by a Taliban spokesman — came as a suicide car bomber killed four people and wounded four others in Kabul, and militants overran a district in the volatile southeast. In the past, Karzai has offered, without success, to hold talks with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and renegade warlord Gulbudin Hekmatyar. Some officials in his government, including provincial governors, are thought to have held informal talks with militants in the south and east, but with little apparent success to calm the insurgency. "We have had representatives from the Taliban meeting with different bodies of Afghan government for a long time," Karzai told a news conference. "I have had some Taliban coming to speak to me as well." Karzai did not disclose any details of the meetings, when they took place or who attended. Hundreds of former members of the hard-line Taliban regime, including a sprinkling of former senior commanders and officials, have reconciled with the government since they were ousted from power in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Current rebel leaders have apparently refused to hold talks, and in the past year, thousands more fighters have picked up guns and joined the insurgency, which in 2006 alone left some 4,000 people, mainly militants, dead. Zabiullah Mujaheed, a purported spokesman for the militants, said that Taliban "do not want to talk to a puppet government." "Karzai's government has no power and all their policies are designed by America," Mujaheed told The Associated Press by phone from an undisclosed location. "If the U.S. wants to negotiate with the Taliban, they should first leave our country." Speaking at the news conference, Karzai, whose administration is increasingly unpopular because of insecurity in the south and east and continuing poverty, struck a conciliatory tone, urging Afghan militants to lay down weapons and join his government. "Afghan Taliban are always welcome, they belong to this country. ... They are the sons of this soil," Karzai said. "As they repent, as they regret, as they want to come back to their own country, they are welcome." But he said that militants from neighboring countries such as Pakistan "should be destroyed." "They are destroying our lives, killing our people, they are not welcome and there will be no talks with them," Karzai said. The Afghan leader often accuses Pakistan of not only providing sanctuary to Taliban, but guiding the rebels in an attempt to wield influence over Afghanistan — charges denied by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in its war on terrorism. In the latest violence, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint in the west of Kabul after a policeman told the vehicle to stop. Five died, including the bomber, whom Mujaheed claimed was a Taliban militant. On Thursday night, Taliban overran Khake Afghan district in the southeastern province of Zabul, forcing the police to flee, said Ali Kheil, a spokesman for Zabul's governor. Authorities will try to retake the district center, still controlled by militants, he said. Also Thursday, militants killed five Afghan security guards protecting a road construction project, and wounded four others in Zabul's Mizan district, Kheil said. More than 750 people have died due to insurgency-related violence this year, according to an AP count based on numbers from U.S., NATO and Afghan officials. The militants are increasingly resorting to suicide bombings, a tactic widely used in Iraq. ___ Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.Source : tinyurl.com/2hwe2h
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Apr 8, 2007 20:42:59 GMT 4
Al-Sadr calls for attacks on U.S. troopsBy SAAD ABDUL KADIR, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD - The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged the Iraqi army and police to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate on pushing American forces out of the country, according to a statement issued Sunday. The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday — a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. "You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy," the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified. In the statement, al-Sadr — who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government — also encouraged his followers to attack only American forces, not fellow Iraqis. "God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them — not against the sons of Iraq," the statement said, in an apparent reference to clashes between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. "You have to protect and build Iraq." The U.S. military on Sunday announced the deaths of four American soldiers, killed a day earlier in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. The province has seen a spike in attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces since the start of a plan two months ago to pacify the capital. Officials believe militants have streamed out of Baghdad to invigorate the insurgency in areas just outside the city. Separately, a pickup truck loaded with artillery shells exploded Sunday near a hospital south of Baghdad, killing at least 15 people. The blast left a crater 10 yards wide, the Iraqi military said. Three mortars sailed into houses in eastern Baghdad, sending six people to the hospital with breathing difficulties from a possible chemical agent, police said. Doctors said the victims' faces turned yellow and they were unable to open their eyes. One hospital official said the chemical was chlorine, and that the victims were expected to recover. Chlorine has been used in at least nine attacks in Iraq since January, mostly in bombings by al-Qaida in Iraq. The bombing in Mahmoudiyah involved a pickup truck parked next to the city General Hospital, an Iraqi army officer said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter. Other reports said the explosion was a rocket attack. At least 26 people were wounded, he said. Hours later, five burned and mutilated bodies remained scattered at the scene. Most of the dead were technicians who worked at auto repair shops nearby, officials said. The hospital was slightly damaged by flying debris and shrapnel, but shops and residential buildings bore more damage. Many of those wounded were in their homes at the time of the blast. Mahmoudiyah is 20 miles south of Baghdad. Also Sunday, Iran's state news agency reported that a spokesman for the country's foreign ministry confirmed that Iran refused to allow Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plane to fly through Iranian airspace. But the spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said the dispute was only a technical issue. "For all flights there is a need for authorization, for which formalities must have been done in advance," he was quoted as saying. Members of the delegation traveling with al-Maliki told The Associated Press early Sunday that the plane was diverted to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where al-Maliki stayed in the airport for more than three hours while his government aircraft was refueled and a new flight plan was filed. U.S. forces also captured a senior al-Qaida leader and two others in a raid Sunday morning in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The al-Qaida figure was identified as "the gatekeeper to the al-Qaida emir of Baghdad" and was linked to several car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital, the military said in a statement, without naming the captive. Thousands of Iraqis streamed toward the Shiite holy city of Najaf for a demonstration Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. Witnesses said thousands of residents of Baghdad's largest Shiite slum, Sadr City, boarded buses and minivans Sunday for Najaf. On Sunday, Iraqi flags flew from most houses and shops in Sadr City — as requested earlier in a statement from al-Sadr's office. Drivers and motorcyclists affixed them to their vehicles. Police escorted convoys of pickup trucks overflowing with young boys waving Iraqi flags, en route to Najaf. An Iraqi flag was hoisted over a military base in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, as Iraqi troops took control of the facility Sunday from British forces. The Shat al-Arab base is the second base transfered to Iraqi control in Basra over the past month. The Iraqi military ordered a 24-hour vehicle ban in Baghdad on Monday for the anniversary, state television reported Sunday. Al-Iraqiya TV said Brig. Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman for the Baghdad security operation, disclosed the vehicle ban, which includes motorcycles. Such bans have been put in place before in an attempt to prevent vehicle bombings. Source : Yahoo News At : tinyurl.com/2xvcgn
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Apr 11, 2007 12:49:54 GMT 4
Admin's Note : This is what I meant when I wrote " Bring out the nails because the Empire seekers tried to defeat with brawn what should have been conquered with brain". We all will now reap tall rewards of seeds sown by small men. Read on please.
Anwaar US-British war on terror backfires: think tankLONDON: The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned Wednesday. "The 'war on terror' is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks," the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled "Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World." It said Britain and the United States have used military might to try to "keep the lid on" problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism. It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11, 2001. "Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror only spawned new terror in the region and created a combat training zone for jihadists," the report's authors argued. It pointed out that the Islamist Taliban movement is now resurgent, six years after it was overthrown in 2001 by the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Sustainable approaches" to fighting terrorism would involve the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq and their replacement with a United Nations stabilisation force, it said. It also recommended the provision of sustained aid for rebuilding and developing Iraq and Afghanistan as well as closing the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where most suspects are held without charge or trial. And it called for a "genuine commitment to a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." The study warned that military intervention in Iran over its nuclear ambitions would be "disastrous," calling instead for a firm and public commitment to a diplomatic solution. Iran insists the programme is peaceful, despite claims from Washington that it masks a drive for nuclear weapons. The study also said the British government's plans to upgrade the submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent could produce international instability. "Nuclear weapon modernisation is likely to serve as a substantial encouragement to nuclear proliferation as countries with perceptions of vulnerability deem it necessary to develop their own deterrent capabilities," it said. Source : tinyurl.com/3244ng
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on May 3, 2007 23:09:52 GMT 4
UK and US must admit defeat and leave Iraq, says British generalJulian Borger, diplomatic editor, Thursday May 3, 2007, Guardian UnlimitedA retired British army general says Iraq's insurgents are justified in opposing the occupation, arguing that the US and its allies should "admit defeat" and leave Iraq before more soldiers are killed. General Sir Michael Rose told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved." Asked if that meant admitting defeat, the general replied: "Of course we have to admit defeat. The British admitted defeat in north America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened. "The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened. The same thing will occur after we leave Iraq." General Rose is a former SAS commander and head of UN forces in Bosnia. Last year, he called for Tony Blair to be impeached for going to war on "false pretences". He has written a book, entitled Washington's War, which compares the Iraqi rebels to George Washington's irregular forces in the American war of independence. When he was asked if he thought the Iraqi insurgents were right to try to force the US-led coalition out, he replied: "Yes I do. As Lord Chatham [the politician William Pitt, the Elder, who, in the second half of the 18th century called for a cessation of hostilities in the colonies and favoured American resistance to the British Stamp Act] said, 'if I was an American — as I am an Englishman — as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms'. The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the Americans." Source : tinyurl.com/33so7r
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on May 24, 2007 18:51:02 GMT 4
Time to Talk with TalibanPakistan’s President shrugs off increased militancy in border region, backs talks with Taliban. The General says Pakistan played no role in creating Taliban and that the West should learn from Pakistan. General Musharraf’s interview with the Globe and MailPresident General Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with The Globe and Mail that talks with the Taliban and other opposition may be necessary to bring stability to Afghanistan. “We have to have a multipronged strategy. In Afghanistan it is only the military strategy which is working now,” Gen Musharraf said, adding that peace could not come from the barrel of a gun. “[The] political element is the negotiations between warring factions. Who are the warring factions? Warring factions are the Afghan government and the coalition forces on one side and the militant Taliban and even non-Taliban … so some form of negotiations between these two.”“Maybe, there are groups who want to give up militancy and negotiate … so I can’t lay down whether you negotiate with the Taliban, but [if] they want to go on fighting, you don’t negotiate with them, take a military angle. You negotiate, you develop contacts with people who are not for fighting.” Read more here : tinyurl.com/2e5r3f
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Jun 2, 2007 12:57:11 GMT 4
Gates won't say who's winning terror warBy ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer SINGAPORE - Declining to say whether the U.S. and its partners are winning the war on terror, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Saturday for more focus on combating poverty and other underlying causes of extremism. "I think we are still early in this contest," Gates said in a question-and-answer session with attendees of a conference on Asian security, an annual gathering that took on an unusual dimension with the participation of a senior Chinese general who offered a pointed defense of his country's military buildup. In a speech to the gathering known as the Shangri-la Dialogue, Gates called on Asian nations to contribute more to the war on terrorism and to ensure that Afghanistan not be allowed to slip back into chaos. He touched only lightly on China, whose military buildup had been a central focus of previous conferences. And while Gates mentioned the Iraq war and warned of security risks posed by the nuclear ambitions of North Korean and Iran, he focused more on broader themes of terrorism and U.S. commitments in Asia. "In particular, the challenge posed by terrorists inspired by radical ideologies cannot be overcome by any one nation — no matter how wealthy or powerful," he said, alluding to U.S. efforts to build a lasting coalition. A member of the audience later asked Gates whether he thought the United States is winning the terror war. He cited areas of progress, including the elimination in late 2001 of Afghanistan as a haven for al-Qaida. But he also said the Islamic extremists have managed since then to expand their recruiting grounds. "On the negative side of the ledger, I think we have not made enough progress in trying to address some of the root causes of terrorism in some of these societies, whether it is economic deprivation or despotism that leads to alienation," he said. Continue reading : tinyurl.com/39nmsd
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jul 23, 2007 16:12:35 GMT 4
America's next big blunder By ERIC MARGOLIS Sunday, 07/22/07 Fears are growing the U.S. may be planning to attack Pakistan's "autonomous" tribal region bordering Afghanistan. The Bush administration is ready to lash out at old ally Pakistan, which Washington now blames for its humiliating failures to crush al-Qaida or defeat Taliban resistance forces in Afghanistan. Limited "hot pursuit" ground incursions, intensive air attacks, and special forces raids by U.S. forces into Pakistan's tribal are being studied. The U.S. claims the 27,200- sq.-km region, home to 3.3 million Pashtun tribesmen, is a safe haven for al-Qaida and Taliban, and a hotbed of anti-American activity. Indeed it is, thanks mostly to the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan. I spent a remarkable time in this wild medieval region during the 1980s and '90s, travelling alone where even Pakistani government officials dared not go, visiting the tribes of Waziristan, Orakzai, Khyber, Chitral, and Kurram, and their chiefs, called "maliks." These tribal belts are always called "lawless." Pashtun tribesmen could shoot you if they didn't like your looks. Rudyard Kipling warned British Imperial soldiers over a century ago, when fighting cruel, ferocious Pashtun warriors of the Afridi clan, "save your last bullet for yourself." Law and honourBut there is law: The traditional Pashtun tribal code, Pashtunwali, that strictly governs behaviour and personal honour. Protecting guests was sacred. I was captivated by this majestic mountain region and wrote of it extensively in my book, War at the Top of the World. The 40 million Pashtun -- called "Pathan' by the British -- are the world's largest tribal group. Imperial Britain divided them by an artificial border, the Durand Line, now the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Pakistan's Pashtun number 28 million, plus an additional 2.5 million refugees from Afghanistan. The 15 million Pashtun of Afghanistan form that nation's largest ethnic group. The tribal agency's Pashtun reluctantly joined Pakistan in 1947 under express constitutional guarantee of total autonomy and a ban on Pakistani troops entering there. But under intense U.S. pressure, President Pervez Musharraf violated Pakistan's constitution by sending 80,000 federal troops to fight the region's tribes, killing 3,000 of them. In best British imperial tradition, Washington pays Musharraf $100 million monthly to rent his sepoys (native soldiers) to fight Pashtun tribesmen. As a result, Pakistan is fast edging towards civil war. The anti-communist Taliban movement is part of the Pashtun people. Taliban fighters move across the artificial Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to borrow a Maoism, like fish through the sea. Osama bin Laden is a hero in the region. The U.S. just increased its reward for bin Laden to $50 million and plans to shower $750 million on the tribal region to try to buy loyalty. Can't be bought Bush/Cheney & Co. do not understand that while they can rent President Musharraf's government in Islamabad, many Pashtun value personal honour far more than money, and cannot be bought. Any U.S. attack on Pakistan would be a catastrophic mistake. First, air and ground assaults will succeed only in widening the anti-U.S. war and merging it with Afghanistan's resistance to western occupation. Second, Pakistan's army officers who refuse to be bought may resist a U.S. attack on their homeland, and overthrow the man who allowed it, Gen. Musharraf. A U.S. attack would sharply raise the threat of anti-U.S. extremists seizing control of strategic Pakistan and marginalize those seeking return to democratic government. Third, a U.S. attack on the tribal areas could re-ignite the old movement to reunite Pashtun parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan into independent "Pashtunistan." That could begin unravelling fragile Pakistan, leaving its nuclear arsenal up for grabs. The U.S. military has grown used to attacking small, weak nations like Grenada and Iraq. Pakistan, with 163 million people, and a poorly equipped, but very tough 550,000-man army, will offer no easy victories. Those Bush administration and Harper government officials who foolishly advocate attacking Pakistan are playing with fire. Source:torontosun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/07/22/4359095.html
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Aug 12, 2007 6:17:28 GMT 4
Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisisPeter Beaumont in Baghdad, Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up. When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by. The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq. Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust. Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began. They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now.' The first soldier starts in again. 'My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He's home now and has serious issues adapting. But I'm not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I'd have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.' A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. 'We're plodding through this,' he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. 'I don't know how much more plodding we've got left in us.' When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?' It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired. But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them. 'I counted it the other day,' says a major whose partner is also a soldier. 'We have been married for five years. We added up the days. Because of Iraq and Afghanistan we have been together for just seven months. Seven months ... We are in a bad place. I don't know whether this marriage can survive it.' The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen. And it is not only the soldiers that are worn out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212bn (£105bn). The rest here : tinyurl.com/2x9kof
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Aug 30, 2007 23:56:10 GMT 4
The Dawn of Truth or....?Military force alone likely not enough to beat Afghan insurgents: US commanderWashington PostKABUL: Military force alone will probably not be enough to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, a top U.S. commander said Thursday, noting that most insurgencies end with a political solution. Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, who is in charge of equipping and training Afghan security forces to take over from international troops, said the local units were making good progress, but declined to say when they would be strong enough to allow foreign forces to go home. More here : tinyurl.com/2lsbhvSo what were we saying?
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Sept 1, 2007 14:03:24 GMT 4
UK general attacks US Iraq policyBBC NewsThe head of the British army during the Iraq invasion has said US post-war policy was "intellectually bankrupt". In a Daily Telegraph interview, former chief of the general staff, Gen Sir Mike Jackson, added that US strategy had been "short-sighted". He said former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "one of the most responsible for the current situation". The US Department of Defence said: "Divergent viewpoints are a hallmark of open, democratic societies." Sir Mike told the Daily Telegraph that Mr Rumsfeld's claim that US forces "don't do nation-building" was "nonsensical". The rest here : tinyurl.com/22scq8
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Sept 2, 2007 6:49:29 GMT 4
British Ministry of Defence moves to limit fallout from General Sir Mike Jackson's criticism of America's post Iraq war strategy.Ned Temko, Sunday September 2, 2007 The ObserverThe Ministry of Defence yesterday moved to limit the diplomatic fallout from an attack on American policy in Iraq by the former head of the British army. Responding to General Sir Mike Jackson's criticism of America's postwar strategy as 'intellectually bankrupt', an MoD spokesman said that the general had been voicing a personal opinion based on his former role. American Defence and State Department spokesmen also played down the remarks yesterday. The damage-limitation exercise reflected concerns that Jackson's comments could carry considerably more diplomatic and political weight than recent similar criticisms. Article continues : tinyurl.com/yrkjgr
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Nov 22, 2007 17:58:57 GMT 4
Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban'· Frontline getting closer to Kabul, says thinktank · Aid not going to those who need it most, warns OxfamThe GuardianThe Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area. Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday. On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change". The rest : tinyurl.com/yoobkl
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Anwaar
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Post by Anwaar on Nov 27, 2007 16:13:37 GMT 4
Resurgent Taliban closing in on Kabul: report"It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when,"By Luke BakerLONDON (Reuters) - The conflict in Afghanistan has reached "crisis proportions", with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday. If NATO, the lead force operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said. "The Taliban has shown itself to be a truly resurgent force," the Senlis Council, an independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a study entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink". "Its ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt," it said. "The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centers, and important road arteries." Senlis said its research had established that the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion in late 2001, had rebuilt a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country and was finding it easy to recruit new followers. It was also increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside and suicide bombs, to powerful effect, and had built a stable network of financial support, funding its operations with the proceeds from Afghanistan's booming opium trade. "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when," the report said. "Their oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever." Source : tinyurl.com/2ffagb
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Anwaar
Administrator
Speak the truth and keep on coming.
Posts: 463
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Post by Anwaar on Dec 17, 2007 6:55:15 GMT 4
UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chiefBlunt assessment delivered as British hand over security to IraqisMonday December 17, 2007, The Guardian The full scale of the chaos left behind by British forces in Basra was revealed yesterday as the city's police chief described a province in the grip of well-armed militias strong enough to overpower security forces and brutal enough to behead women considered not sufficiently Islamic. As British forces finally handed over security in Basra province, marking the end of 4½ years of control in southern Iraq, Major General Jalil Khalaf, the new police commander, said the occupation had left him with a situation close to mayhem. "They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world," he said in an in an interview for Guardian Films and ITV. Khalaf painted a very different picture from that of British officials who, while acknowledging problems in southern Iraq, said yesterday's handover at Basra airbase was timely and appropriate. Major General Graham Binns, who led British troops into the city in 2003, said the province had "begun to regain its strength". He added: "I came to rid Basra of its enemies and I now formally hand Basra back to its friends." But in the film, to be broadcast on the Guardian Unlimited website and ITV News, Khalaf lists a catalogue of failings, saying: · Basra has become so lawless that in the last three months 45 women have been killed for being "immoral" because they were not fully covered or because they may have given birth outside wedlock; · The British unintentionally rearmed Shia militias by failing to recognise that Iraqi troops were loyal to more than one authority; · Shia militia are better armed than his men and control Iraq's main port. The rest : tinyurl.com/2fwbqn
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