War in Iraq
Unilateral and lawless use of force .
............... UN
Please note that there is a policy of deliberate restriction of information by the US Central Command in Qatar . This is counter acted by the lack of formal censorship of reports of the " embedded " reporters , there is no central point for official information .
Let there be no misunderstanding of our position , the Iraqi government are thugs and we would cheer their demise . However the US approach to this dispute has been , to say the least , stupid .
We would suggest avoiding mainstream US media , in particular Fox News . BBC News and ABC News provide a more balanced coverage . For an Arabic viewpoint : Al Jazeera .
Present ( Day 4 ) reports are confusing in part because of the above mentioned reason .
We have warned of the dangers in this " War " on our previous page . The battle plan is fundamentally flawed as a result of the interference of civilians .
There is no such thing as a clean war , it is about killing .
Today's attempt by the US administration to prevent US viewers to see pictures of dead and captured service men and women is an example of stupidity . The rest of the world has seen them and a web search will find them .
Causalities to date are extremely low , in part because of US policy . We would caution that this may change once the Battle for Baghdad is joined . It is a failure of the world's media to warn that causalities may be of the order of thousands during this encounter .
( Six months later )
Iraq is every much as much of a quagmire as some of us believed it would be , more Americans have been killed since Bush announced that the War was over than during the " War " . The only way out appears to be by ceding control to the United Nations and providing sufficient on going support for a secure democracy to be established . If a cut and run occurs , as has effectively happened in Afghanistan , their can be no lasting stability .
FRANCE
Those in the United States who are demonising the French should look at the American Revolutionary War , in particular the period 29 September - 19 October , 1781 . The then " Rebels " could not have won at Yorktown without the French fleet in the Chesapeake , with it's supplies of siege cannon etc. , and French troops on the ground . The Republic would have been lost five years after it's establishment .
The French can be an arrogant lot , as witnessed in the settlement of WW I , which , in part led to the rise of fascism and WW II . More recently , they have murdered Greenpeace protestors in New Zealand and detonated nuclear weapons in the South Pacific . They should be condemned for these and similar actions but , please a little benefit of the doubt over Iraq .
July , 2005
Despite the stupidity of the US lead attack , there can be no withdrawal until the job is done . Otherwise we will have another Afghanistan .
COMMENTS :
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Due Preparations for the Plague: A Novel
"This is the worst president ever. He's the worst president in all of American history." ...... quote from Society of Professional Journalists gathering in Los Angeles re G. W. Bush
TERRORIST OR FREEDOM FIGHTER ?
TRUTH , LIES AND U.S. , UK AND AUS INTEL
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