Iraq needs to stop complaining!

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Originally posted here by Negative


Something that also is overlooked often, is that in Iraq for every soldier of the "coalition" (I never understood how someone can call a partnership between two countries a coalition),

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I've never understood how someone can call the United Nations, the United Nations, when the U.S.s troops are by far used more for it's "police actions" than any other....oh wait, that is out of the countries that HAVE a military.

Your arguments are asinine. Sleeper cells in U.S. territories have bomber vests and that's the work of Pres. Bush. Your hatred of president Cowboy is blinding you. :p

My argument is that the finding of suicide bomber vests doesn't proove anything.

It's about time your 'police force' comes to action. There is a lot of things that can't be restored anymore though. One of them being the Archeological Museum of Baghdad, which used to have one of the most valuable collections worldwide. 140k pieces of history, lots of them dating back to the first civilizations in Mesopotamia, have been destroyed. But oh wait... as your military leaders put it: "We don't care about the lootings right now. We are the army, not a police force."

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KorpDeath said

I've never understood how someone can call the United Nations, the United Nations, when the U.S.s troops are by far used more for it's "police actions" than any other

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US is part of UN (or was :)) so if they're used by UN you can't count this has a US decision. France, Germany and UK have participate on lots of "police actions". UN use US because US have the 1st army in world but other UN members are alse use alot.

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Originally posted here by Negative
My argument is that the finding of suicide bomber vests doesn't proove anything.

It's about time your 'police force' comes to action. There is a lot of things that can't be restored anymore though. One of them being the Archeological Museum of Baghdad, which used to have one of the most valuable collections worldwide. 140k pieces of history, lots of them dating back to the first civilizations in Mesopotamia, have been destroyed. But oh wait... as your military leaders put it: "We don't care about the lootings right now. We are the army, not a police force."

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I'd agree with you on the point about suicide bomber vests - I would of thought what was more significant was the destruction of a large terrorist training camp in Kurdish NE Iraq near to the Iran border. Strangely that wasn't really covered that much in the news at the time.

I'm dubious about your quote (where did that come from?). It's true that the Marines have said that they don't regard themselves as a police force, which is not the same as saying the condone the looting. I think the tentative steps to get some of the original Iraqi police force (not the secret police) back onto the streets in Basra, Bagdaad etc. is a positive move.

Of course the British have a big advantage here, having dealt with a volatile situation in Northern Ireland for several years, and also been involved in peace keeping operations in places like Bosnia. British troops are regarded as tough but fair when used in this role.
If they see a serious problem (like the 5 Iraqis looting a bank who opened fire on them, then they will return fire), otherwise they go for a more gentle approach trying to build bridges with the locals.

We could talk about the stats as to whether Europe is in favour of this war for a long time.
It is not clear cut.
Do you use the latest opinion poles or how the governments voted?
Do you just factor the results by the total population of each country, or use the more complicated EU method where each country has x votes (not necessarily dependent on their population)?

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Originally posted here by darkes


I'd agree with you on the point about suicide bomber vests - I would of thought what was more significant was the destruction of a large terrorist training camp in Kurdish NE Iraq near to the Iran border. Strangely that wasn't really covered that much in the news at the time.

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We didn't here about it because
1. The mission was basically a failure some where around 60 dead or captured 600 escaped
2. The camp was Alkeda and Iranian funded and run, it was anti-Sadam and initially wanted to fight on the US sided of the war. Remember no mater what propaganda we are fed Alkeda hates the Iraq's as much s they hate us, Sadam was enemy #1 to Binladden

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Originally posted here by darkes


I'm dubious about your quote (where did that come from?). It's true that the Marines have said that they don't regard themselves as a police force, which is not the same as saying the condone the looting. I think the tentative steps to get some of the original Iraqi police force (not the secret police) back onto the streets in Basra, Bagdaad etc. is a positive move.

Of course the British have a big advantage here, having dealt with a volatile situation in Northern Ireland for several years, and also been involved in peace keeping operations in places like Bosnia. British troops are regarded as tough but fair when used in this role.
If they see a serious problem (like the 5 Iraqis looting a bank who opened fire on them, then they will return fire), otherwise they go for a more gentle approach trying to build bridges with the locals.

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Unfortunately its the brits who are the ones refusing to police

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Originally posted here by bballad


We didn't here about it because
1. The mission was basically a failure some where around 60 dead or captured 600 escaped
2. The camp was Alkeda and Iranian funded and run, it was anti-Sadam and initially wanted to fight on the US sided of the war. Remember no mater what propaganda we are fed Alkeda hates the Iraq's as much s they hate us, Sadam was enemy #1 to Binladden



Unfortunately its the brits who are the ones refusing to police

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Well you may well be right about the camp in the NE of Iraq - I was puzzled about why it got so little publicity - I've not been able to find out much about this.

One thing that is significant here is that is a lot of hatred between the two different Muslim religions in this part of the world (Sunni & Shiite) rather reminiscent of Northern Ireland with the Catholics & the Protestants. Iran is taking a neutral (even a slightly pro US stance amazingly enough) because it hopes to extend it's influence because of the religious links it has with the majority in Iraq.

How you can claim the British are failing to police is beyond me, which is not to say that there is not more to be done.
I suppose that was why a British soldier was nearly killed yesterday when taking on looters at a bank in Basra ??
You have to remember that you have a generally very poor population in the south of Iraq that has been deliberately deprived of food and water by the previous regime, so some sort of revenge by the general population is only to be expected.
Going in with a gung ho American style approach would be totally counter productive, which is why the British have been taking it slowly trying to establish what the position on the ground really is.

Personally, I applaud them for this, and suspect they will be more successful than the US forces in the North over the next few weeks in establishing law & order.

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I'm dubious about your quote (where did that come from?). It's true that the Marines have said that they don't regard themselves as a police force, which is not the same as saying the condone the looting. I think the tentative steps to get some of the original Iraqi police force (not the secret police) back onto the streets in Basra, Bagdaad etc. is a positive move.

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The exact quote comes from an 'interview' an Israelian journalist (working for Reuters if I'm correct) had with some (American) soldiers watching as the Archeological Museum of Baghdad was being looted. His question was simply "Why don't you do anything about it?", the answer was as simple as the question. A couple of minutes later, he asked the same question to the soldiers watching as some Ministry was being looted. The answer: exactly the same, only this time with some '****ing' added.
I stand corrected on having put that quote in the mouth of military leaders. They indeed didn't literally say that they don't care about the lootings.
Right now it's too late to start caring about the lootings though. Everything valuable has been destroyed already: the ministries of Planning, Education, Irrigation, Industrie, External Affiars, Culture, Information, hospitals, musea,...
Remarkable fact is that only two ministries have been protected. Both institutions are surrounded by tanks, armed personnel and Humvees. Those institutions are the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Oil.
The US say that those two ministries are important for the future of Iraq. Agreed, but aren't those others important? Education? Irrigation? Trade? The US can miss 2000 soldiers to protect oil fields in Kirkuk, but they can't miss 200 to protect some ministries?
I hope Rumsfeld will stop laughing in the faces of journalists who claim anarchy rules in Baghdad, and lootings ARE taking place. "They keep showing the same images over and over again, and giving a completely wrong impression." Right.

No need to say that under Geneva conventions, ""...to the fullest extent of the means available to them, the occupying forces have a duty to ensure that the population has sufficient supplies in terms of water, food and medical care. As the temporary administrators of the occupied territory, the Occupying Powers must support public services and manage resources primarily in the interests of the population, without discrimination. If the whole or part of the population under occupation is not adequately supplied, the Occupying Powers must allow impartial humanitarian organizations to undertake assistance operations. However, the provision of humanitarian aid in no way relieves the Occupying Powers of their administrator's responsibilities towards the population under occupation."

And yes, I used the latest opinion polls. 70% is an under-estimation even ;)
And about the claims of Eastern-Europeans being in favour:

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Interesting article
John C. Hulsman of the Heritage Foundation wrote, "The dirty little secret in alliance politics is that the farther east one goes in Europe, the more pro-American you find both the political elites and public opinion. ... The Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians know that it is American military, economic, and political might that safeguards the world, not debating societies like the United Nations."
Really? How is it, then, that 82 percent of Hungarians oppose war under any circumstances? This shows a greater level of opposition than in Germany or France, where polls show 70 to 80 percent against war.

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Here are some figures:
Poland:
A poll released Tuesday by Ipsos, however, showed that 75 percent of Poles are opposed to any US-led military action against Iraq, while only 20 percent said they would support a war.
Slovakia: nearly three-fifths of respondents opposed the country's participation in a war with Saddam Hussein under any conditions. Support was almost nonexistent for Slovakia's involvement if such a campaign did not get U.N. approval.

I'd say it IS clear cut as far as the population goes. As far as the governments go: it'd probably be a close call if you'd use the EU methods of voting.

The comment I heard from the brits came from a sergeant I believe so he may have overstated his authority and perhaps the top brass changed their minds (the report I heard was from last week.)

As for the terrorist base.. That’s a neat story. The mission and area where closed subject to reporters, none of the embedded reporters knew that it was happening and independents where forbidden to go with in a 20 mile radius of the base, the only reason it was heard of at all is the balls of one NPR and one BBC reporter. They dressed up in surplus special forces uniforms and bluffed their way past three check points, they actually watched the raid go down, if it wasn’t for them going public with what they saw the US would have clamed a major success even thought the mission was basically a failure (only 60 killed or captured out of 600 terrorists)

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Going in with a gung ho American style approach would be totally counter productive, which is why the British have been taking it slowly trying to establish what the position on the ground really is.

Personally, I applaud them for this, and suspect they will be more successful than the US forces in the North over the next few weeks in establishing law & order.

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Darkes, I don't know how you can say anything at all about the British being more successful in the way that they are doing things. First of all if it were up to the British to decide everything then we wouldn't even have had this war in the first place and Iraq would still have a dictatorship.
I agree with Negative when he says that priceless things have been destroyed and I don't think the U.S has gone about this in the right way at all.

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Remarkable fact is that only two ministries have been protected. Both institutions are surrounded by tanks, armed personnel and Humvees. Those institutions are the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Oil.

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This caught my eye when Negative posted this and I think the U.S. is only caring for itself when they go and protect the Ministry of Oil but not the Ministry of Education. I think that if they really were trying to get Iraq to be a stable country then they would have at least protected that ministry. But I stand by what I say about the U.S. being more sucessful than the U.N. would have been.

Korpdeath.. can you say brainwashed...

http://yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1179
http://www.etv.cx/~the_jinx/911TheRoadToTyranny.asf

lemme brainwash you some more... perhaps that would spark something ?