Allied Coalition Versus Iraq (GULF WAR 2)
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gg liao
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Looks like it's the endgame for Saddam liao, he appears to have lost general control of the populace...
Saddam neglected one important part of Sun Zhu, and that's a soverign with morals... -
my hope is not deja vu of afghan rite now....
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Now the war is over, but what will happen in Iraq?
It is very worrying because we do not know how a country which suddenly lost a dictatorship will react when an infantile democratic system is formed. In the course of history, there has as far as I know, been not a single case where a country successfully converted to democracy from a dictatorship as a result of foreign intervention. We do not know what will happen, especially since Iraq is made up of so many different groups.. . common only in that they are Arabs.
And I was just wondering, why do Arabs, and Muslims in general, always see the rest of the world as being pitted against themselves?? I do not understand why they choose to hide in self-imposed illusion that the world is against them, and that why they take any attack on a Muslim/Arab country as an attack on the entire Arab race itself? What about the Iran-Iraq war then? Did the Arabs call it a Civil War? -
Who cares, almost anything would be better then saddam...
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Situation Is Weird, But Dangerous
War Diary: Wednesday, April 9, 2003
Apr 10, 2003
There is a simple question before us. What happened in Baghdad today? To hear the media tell it, the war is over. To hear the administration tell it, the war is not over and there may still be hard fighting ahead. The media and the administration have been out of sync since the beginning of the war. Before the war, the administration was warning that the Iraqis might resist, while the media were speculating that the war could be over in days. When it turned out that the Iraqis were resisting, the media wondered whether the administration's war plans were in a complete shambles. The administration has steadily warned of manageable difficulties, while the media have been manic-depressive. We tend to buy the administration's side of things at this point.
At times like this, it is best to get back to basics, to what we know. U.S. forces do not occupy Baghdad. In certain areas of the city, defenses appear to have disintegrated. In other areas of the city, fighting still seems to be taking place. In yet other areas of the city, which U.S. forces have not yet penetrated, the status of things is unclear. But on the whole, there appears to have been a qualitative change in Iraqi resistance.
What caused this? It was not simply the effectiveness of U.S. operations. Resistance appears to have diminished in areas that U.S. forces had not yet engaged. Something seems to have happened on the Iraqi side. A number of possible explanations present themselves:
1. Saddam Hussein and his senior staff might have been killed in the U.S. air attacks. As the news of this swept the Special Republican Guard over the past 24-48 hours, a defeatist attitude set in and many abandoned their positions.
2. Hussein might have made a deal with the Americans. There are rumors sweeping the Middle East that the Russians brokered a deal between Hussein and the Bush administration that, in return for safe passage, Iraqi forces in Baghdad would not resist. Some rumors are that the Russians evacuated Hussein and other leaders to Damascus -- in the convoy that was attacked on the way out of Baghdad -- and that Hussein is already in Moscow, but that no deal has yet been made. Others say that Hussein is in the Russian Embassy in Baghdad awaiting safe passage. The permutations of this rumor are endless, but the basic line is that the Russians brokered a deal: Hussein's life for capitulation.
3. The battle of Baghdad might not have been the main battle of the war. The Republican Guard and Special Republican Guards have withdrawn to the north of the city, where they will move toward either Tikrit or toward the oil fields around Kirkuk, where about six regular army divisions are deployed. In this scenario, the Iraqis always had intended to hold up the Americans in Baghdad, but to force the main battle in the north, after exhausting U.S. forces and forcing them to fight on extremely long supply lines. Hussein is in the north, not in Baghdad, commanding the final battle that he hopes will end in a cease-fire.
4. The defenders of Baghdad simply were not prepared to fight and die to save Hussein, and abandoned their positions. Hussein is now scampering for his life.
5. The battle of Baghdad is in a temporary lull. The Republican Guard and Special Republican Guards are dug in and waiting in the residential neighborhoods and will come to life when dismounted U.S. infantry enter their areas.
The fact is that any one of these theories could be true, or it may be a combination of them. What we do know is that about a quarter of the country is still unoccupied and that, at least on paper, there are a lot of Iraqi troops still deployed. We think that that is why the U.S. Department of Defense is warning that there could be tough battles ahead. The situation is weird, but dangerous. -
Anti US rhetoric? I'm sorry, but I don't think questioning their some of their motives and methods qualifies me as "anti-US". I've posted plenty of pro-US things here in the past, but that doesn't make me a blind follower of theirs, lapping up and agreeing with all their actions without thinking it through.Originally posted by laser51088:and yeah Viper52, u gonna blast away with anti-US rhetoric again... read some mainstream media and believe at least abit of it pls. . .
As for reading mainstream media, I do follow lots of CNN, BBC, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera and even CCTV. And I wished I understood French, Russian and/or German, because I would be able to get thier opinions without having to rely on CNN et al to put their spin on the French/German/Russian perspective before passing it to me. Thats called getting different perspectives and forming my own opinion. Oh wait, silly me, I forget, most of the news organisations I've quoted are not from the US, so that excludes them in your eyes as "mainstream" doesn't it?
Maybe you're the one who should try to try to widen your sources of information/opinion by getting a perspective other than from one side isn't it? Or are you perfectly happy with that narrow definition of what you term "mainstream media"
And when you're done sticking labels on my points of view here, maybe you'd like to post your enlightened (if narrow) rebuttals to my argument in the "Why US is right thread"? -
LINK TO PLAYING CARDS AVAILABLE ON CENTCOM WEB SITE
CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar – An electronic version of the deck of playing cards featuring Iraqi leadership, displayed by Brig. Gen. Vince Books during the CENTCOM briefing today, is available at the CENTCOM Web site.
To view the file, click on the link “Identification Playing Cards PDF File,” (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/g030411-D-6570C.html) under Operation Iraqi Freedom. -
The war on CNN: A case of the missing Iraqi victims
By Helmi Yusof
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,182790,00.html?
THE extraordinary scenes of elation as hundreds of Iraqi civilians celebrated the fall of Baghdad and the destruction of President Saddam Hussein's statue will certainly be among the most iconic images of the year.
Cable television channels like CNN and BBC played up these powerful pictures on Wednesday, repeating the clips every hour well into the next day.
Now that this pre-emptive war has been seemingly vindicated by sections of Iraqi civilians, CNN has also begun featuring lengthy reports of Iraqi casualties in hospitals.
Before Wednesday, however, this was not the case.
Whereas Sept 11 was humanised by endless stories of innocent American victims and the loved ones they left behind, the pictures of wounded Iraqi civilians had been - before Wednesday - relatively scant. Instead, one got blow-by-blow accounts by embedded journalists reporting the victories of the United States military.
The images of hundreds of Iraqi casualties were a lot less important than having retired generals and military experts analyse the might of the US.
On Tuesday night - just one day before Baghdad fell - a Red Cross representative reported on CNN that Iraqi hospital facilities were being 'stretched to their limits'.
But when CNN correspondent Rym Brahimi appeared at about 10.35 pm to give more facts about the hospitals and civilian casualties, she was unceremoniously taken off the air seconds later. No explanation was given by anchor Jim Clancy.
Each time CNN announced a figure of Iraqi casualties as released by the Iraqi government, it would be followed by a warning: 'But this figure could not be verified independently.'
One would think that with CNN's vast resources, it could do better than that.
Last Saturday night, there was mini-chaos on the BBC when US Major-General Victor Renuart told reporters at a news conference that substantial numbers of US forces had penetrated Baghdad and could move freely around the city.
But when BBC anchor Nik Gowing checked with his colleagues stationed in the heart of Baghdad, none of them had seen head or tail of the American forces.
It left Gowing to conclude that there was a 'huge gulf' between what BBC was seeing and what the US government was saying.
The CNN played down these discrepancies and called it 'mixed messages', while focusing the news of the hour on reports by embedded journalists. So much for CNN's self-proclaimed 'accurate and balanced' reporting.
Earlier, on March 24, I woke up to see the pictures of five US prisoners of war on the front page of this newspaper.
But as soon as I switched on the BBC, I learnt that US President George W. Bush had been trying to suppress the release of those pictures, for fear of a 'public relations disaster'.
So much for America's much-feted press freedom.
Consequently, CNN reported the story without the pictures, even though many other channels like Qatar's Al-Jazeera, China's CCTV and the Spanish-language Telemundo were already showing them.
Perhaps the most insidious words that I've heard during this whole conflict are 'public relations disaster'.
When the seven Iraqi women and children were shot by US soldiers because they failed to stop their car at a checkpoint, the headlines worldwide called it a 'public relations disaster'.
Ask the family members of the dead Iraqis if 'public relations disaster' means anything to them. Ask, especially, the hapless Iraqi man who lost 15 family members at one go when a US helicopter blew up their pick-up truck with a rocket.
The man looked at the coffins of his wife, six children, parents, three brothers and their wives, and asked: 'Which one of them should I cry on?'
This story was splashed on the front pages of several Arab newspapers and featured on satellite television channel Al-Jazeera.
What this produced, however, was not a show of remorse on the part of the coalition forces. Instead, all the Arabic news agencies were criticised roundly by the US and British officials for being 'pro-Iraq'.
Are non-American deaths less worthy of being mourned than American deaths? It would seem so.
Before Wednesday, CNN had not only failed to humanise the Iraqis in the way that it humanised Americans, to this viewer, but it had also sought to play up the face of Muslim anger.
When the military conflict began, the BBC showed frequent reports of hundreds of millions protesting against the war all over the world.
But on CNN, these images only appeared in briefer, occasional snippets.
Last week, however, CNN started carrying several lengthy segments of anti-war demonstrations - but most were shown to be in Muslim countries.
Anti-war sentiments were prevalent in many Muslim and non-Muslim countries, but CNN showed longer and more frequent clips of the Muslim demonstrations than the non-Muslims ones.
Yes, one might share in the joy of the dancing Iraqis celebrating the demise of Mr Saddam's brutal dictatorship.
But CNN, with its questionable selection of what to show when, has not always served the interests of its international viewers.
The writer is with The Straits Times Political Desk -
SAF Medical Team sent to reconstruct Iraq
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/37310/1/.html
By US Correspondent Malcolm Brown
Singapore has offered to send an armed forces medical team and other supplies to Iraq to help in the country's reconstruction.
The offer was made by Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan during talks in Washington with senior American leaders.
Dr Tan, who is also Defence Minister, met US Secretary of State Colin Powell and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
With Iraq and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome dominating the international agenda, there was plenty for Dr Tan and Mr Powell to discuss.
Richard Boucher, State Department Spokesman, said, "It was a very, I think, positive meeting, a good meeting between some close partners in many of the important issues that face us in the world today."
The Deputy Prime Minister's trip to Washington coincided with what he called a "new phase" in the American-led campaign in Iraq.
US President George W Bush said, "We've had an historic week. I don't think I'll ever forget...I'm sure a lot of people will never forget that statue of Saddam Hussein falling."
But the fall of the Iraqi leader has brought in its wake looting and lawlessness.
Mr Rumsfeld said, "The task we've got ahead of us now is an awkward one, because you have to go from a transition; from a repressed regime to an unrepressed regime that is free to do good things, and also do bad things and we're going to see both."
And it is a transition that must get underway before hostilities are over.
Dr Tan said, "We should not assume that the war has been concluded. The major part has been accomplished and it is quite clear that the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq is over."
The pent up frustration of Iraqi people is already complicating the efforts to fill the void left by the defeated regime.
Dr Tan said, "What is needed now is to restore law and order throughout the country. I mean, until people feel safe, until looting stops, there is no way in which you are going to rebuild the country again."
The United States is now asking members of its so-called coalition for help in that rebuilding.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan has offered Singapore's assistance.
He said, "We have offered to the US, if it is required, a medical team from the Singapore Armed Forces, which will be ready to deploy to Iraq or to Kuwait at any time that they are required."
Dr Tan's trip began with the inauguration of Singapore's new US-based Apache attack helicopter detachment.
It ended with plans for even more cooperation between the armed forces of Singapore and the United States.
In addition to the medical team, the Deputy Prime Minister has also pledged tents and other supplies to help in the reconstruction of Iraq.
He returns home with an extra American request, this time for Singapore to get involved in the policing effort that will be required to restore order in that country. -
Where's The Next War?
April 13, 2003
By GWYNNE DYER
A reader's letter published in the Los Angeles Times said it all: "We have learned two things from the war in Iraq. We have learned that the Tigris flows through Baghdad, and the Hubris flows through the White House." Hubris - the belief that you are so clever and so powerful that you can get away with anything - was certainly the prevailing state of mind in Washington this past week as the Iraqi regime collapsed before the U.S. onslaught. So where is the next war?
There was never any doubt that the United States would win this war: The U.S. defense budget last year was 250 times bigger than Iraq's. Resistance was futile, and most of the Iraqi soldiers who fought and died did so knowing that they were throwing their lives away in a gesture of defiance.
But the next phase of the drama is already taking shape offstage, and is likely to be more painful and difficult for the United States than simply smashing up a Third World army. In the north of Iraq, the Kurds want to control the mainly Kurdish cities of Mosul and Kirkuk because the surrounding oilfields would place an independent Kurdish state on a sound economic footing. Kurdish fighters have already seized Kirkuk - but Turkey, anxious about the influence of an independent Kurdistan on their own huge and restive Kurdish minority, have said that if the Kurds take Mosul and Kirkuk, they invade.
The United States is trying to limit the damage, promising that the Kurdish fighters will be replaced by "coalition" troops in Kirkuk and inviting Turkish army observers to the city, but it won't find it easy to get the Kurds out. This is their best chance for independence in the past 80 years, and they would be mad not to try for it. They have been betrayed by the United States so many times that they feel they owe it nothing, and they say they would resist a Turkish invasion whether the United States helps them or not. There is no sign that Washington has thought this through any better than it did the request (ultimately rejected by the Turks) to let U.S. forces use Turkish territory for the invasion of Iraq.
It gets worse. Any Shiite resistance movement in Iraq is bound to get support from Iran, and there will soon be U.S. troops all along the Iran-Iraq border, only a few hours' drive from Iran's main oilfields. Even if the Bush administration isn't planning another war before the next election, U.S. attempts to stop infiltration across the border from Iran could easily lead to a U.S.-Iran war much sooner than that - and Iran has a relatively united population three times bigger than Iraq's.
Above all, there is the fact that the United States, abetted by Britain and Australia, has launched an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state. That is why most other governments are deeply worried: The American attack on Iraq could be used as a precedent to justify an Indian attack on Pakistan or a North Korean attack on South Korea. The U.S. action in Iraq has fundamentally challenged the rule of law in the world, which is a problem no matter how happy most Iraqis are at the moment - and Washington clearly meant to do just that.
Consider the remarks of former Central Intelligence Agency James Woolsey, a Bush administration insider who was recently mentioned in a leaked Pentagon document as one of the possible administrators of post-war Iraq. Last week in Los Angeles, he described the war in Iraq as the start of the Fourth World War (the Cold War being the third), and warned his audience that "this Fourth World War, I think, will last considerably longer than either the First or Second World Wars did for us."
The real enemies this time, he explained, were the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and the Islamic extremists of al Qaeda. He made no distinctions between them (though in real life they have very little in common), and he promised a long crusade against them. There was no suggestion that the United States would bother to get legal authority from the United Nations before attacking the sovereign states on his list.
"As we move toward a new Middle East over the years and the decades to come," he said, "we will make a lot of people very nervous. Our response should be, `Good! We want you nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march.'"
Eventually the American public is likely to rebel against the continual flow of casualties and the higher taxes that come with this new role of global vigilante, but in the meantime, it is going to be a wild ride.
Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist in London.
http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-dyercommentary0413.artapr13,0,4748735.story?coll=hc%2Dheadlines%2Dcommentary -
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/middleeast/view/37362/1/.html
Powell insists US will find banned weapons in Iraq
US Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted the US would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"The combat period is over and we can now turn our attention to finding weapons of mass destruction...There's strong evidence and no question about the fact there are weapons of mass destruction," he told BBC television.
"We will find weapons of mass destruction."
More than three weeks into the war against Iraq, no firm evidence has yet been uncovered of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons in the country.
Saddam Hussien's top scientific adviser, General Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi, surrendered to US forces on Saturday, insisting Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons.
Powell said the Iraqi campaign could be called a success when Iraq embraced democracy.
He said victory should not be based on finding or killing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
let us wait n c the situation as time past by 