What's it really like in Iraq? from somebody who was there......

[buycitgo]

Georgie Anne Geyer, no liberal comsymp, has done a long series of pieces on the Iraq invasion run up, prosecution of said war, the machinations going on behind the scenes. yesterday's article details an interview with a "top level US administrator" (unfortunately nameless, for obvious reasons), who has some pretty astounding things to say about just how badly things are going, and what the future holds

"Now there's a new approach rising," he went on, "with huge bases created in part to keep up the morale of the troops. But this creates a large insulation between the Iraqis and the Americans; the Americans are living in their own artificial culture of DVDs, Pizza Huts and calls home. Hell, we have trailer parks housing 12,000 people. It is `force protection' above all.

"......American contractors and military will hire anybody--Palestinians--before they'll hire Iraqis. Now they're bringing in Bangladeshis to do the work. This is because there is simply no way to vet Iraqis, so they fall back on foreign workers. ..."

As to our Coalition Provisional Authority, which is half State Department and half Pentagon, he went on, "they only really handle small micro projects. No large ones. That's because there is no security to go out and work among the people.

"I go to the meetings of the military with the Iraqi Governing Council-- the supposed Iraqi government-in-waiting--and the Governing Council barely shows up. We're working on turning over the airport to them, but there are never any Iraqis in the meetings! ...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0402200306feb20,1,3444563.story

the above column will make you feel pretty angry (not too mention extremely sorry for the people of Iraq--not to mention our soldiers, consigned to a world of frustarted boredom, punctuated by bursts of terror), as does most of the news from this corner of the world

here's an archive of her writings. most of them are real eye-openers. what's most interesting about them is that she's a very hard-core conservative, cold-war hawk, and I used to dismiss her columns as largely paranoid, lunatic rants. however, she appears to be of that most rare breed: an honest right winger, who KNOWS the major players, is not fooled by the lies, and is honest enough to call them as she sees them, rather than fall into lockstep with the rest of the craven tools that permeate both politics (on both sides of the aisle) and the media

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/

[boobooday]

1. Oh what a mess

I can't believe we couldn't stop Bush from making this mess. All the millions of us all over the world who protested.

It is very sad. There will be suffering for so many years to come from this horrible war.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[loudnclear]

7. And the Dems answer Bush's radio address justifying Iraq invasion by

talking about "no child left behind?" We can't even get the topic straight. Our strategy should be to not allow Bush to have one issue of his own that we don't come back swinging with facts and figures from 9/11 to Afghanistan to Iraq to tax cuts to unemployment. When Bush talks about "no child left behind" THEN we talk about it but we need to keep a rapid response to whatever he is talking about. That's the only way the sheeple can put things together.

[buycitgo]

8. was that today?

and what about Daschle, giving support again to the dauphin, just the other day?

did you see the threads on THAT?

when are they going to get someone in the minority slot who's at least a member of phylum chordata?

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. Halliburton announces $204m 3rd quarter operating income

Halliburton announced over the weekend that third quarter 2003 income from continuing operations was $92 million or $0.21 per diluted share. Net income was $58 million or $0.13 per diluted share, which includes a net loss from discontinued operations of $0.08 per diluted share.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/business/b204112003.html

[Bandit]

3. Is that all? ~ They must be getting desperate for the next war to get goin

War Profiteering, War Profiteering, War Profiteering.

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. Iran too slow in proving it has no nuclear bomb program: Powell

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday criticized the Iranian government for moving too slowly in showing the world it is not trying to build an atomic bomb and urged Tehran to give up its suspected weapons of mass destruction program.

"After 18 years of trying to deceive the International Atomic Energy Agency and the world, Iran is slowly -- still too slowly -- coming forward with answers needed by the IAEA and by the rest of the international community to make sure that they are not violating their obligations," Powell said.



http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220233114.o7f91lwq.html

[buycitgo]

5. and did you see how much they paid to the IRS last year?

effectively nothing

somebody linked the story here the other day

and didn't they get money back for several years in a row?

[buycitgo]

6. geyer's latest, on the latest Chalabi embarrassment

All along, Chalabi was bitterly distrusted in Washington by both the CIA and the State Department. The intentions of Chalabi & Co. could not have had access here -- or the success in getting us into this war -- without the "American Likudniks" within the neoconservative war party.

Douglas Feith, deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, has long been known as a far-right supporter of Ariel Sharon's Likud Party in Israel. He argues that there is no difference between U.S. and Israeli security concerns; other officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and David Wurmser are right behind him.

The fact that so many of the authors of this war are Jewish is not important. That they uncritically fit the alien shroud of Israeli far-right expansionist policy over American security policy is. They supported Chalabi so recklessly because he promised to immediately open relations between Iraq and Israel and begin piping oil to Israel.

As this incredible saga of using America to fight other people's wars continues -- some analysts here call it a "coup," some call it a "hijacking" of our policy; I prefer "conspiracy" -- the wash-up takes ever new configurations. The beleaguered neocons, responding to allegations that they led America into a falsely defined war, are diverting attacks from themselves to the CIA. Richard Perle, who as head of the Defense Policy Board had great input into the preparations for war, actually said this week: "The CIA has an almost perfect record of getting it wrong in relation to the Gulf going back to the Shah of Iran." He called for a "shakeup" in the intelligence establishment, which means "heads should roll." Neocon David Brooks even wrote in a New York Times column recently that there were no neocons! And one story going around town has Dick Cheney angrily accusing Colin Powell of bungling Iraq because he didn't let Chalabi immediately take over.

A coup? A hijacking? A conspiracy? Come to think of it, the situation more closely resembles the word "neocon" -- just take off the "neo."

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/

and, AFA Powell goes (post 4), I think that, of all the monsters up there on the hill (or down in his cesspit of Foggy Bottom) HE's become the most loathsome......playing up his credibility card lately, to the max, when it's been long overdrawn

WHY on earth does anybody believe a thing he says, or treat him with the kind of respect he still apparently commands?

has anyone (besides the chimp, of course) been so obviously outed as a complete, lying tool? when are the media going to spell it out for the credulous news consumers?

rhetorical question, I know

[leftchick]

9. Heh,......

<"June? It's going to be the Iraqi `government,' with the U.S. military all around them--sort of like Vichy, France. Nobody thinks June will end things: Everybody thinks we will have to be there for many years in order to keep it all propped up. We're saying we want democracy and prosperity--I'm convinced they are two separate things.">

...nobody except the typical murican who will no longer see news out of Iraq after the "handover".