Pitt did better on the population number than on some of his other "facts." On population, he was merely off by a few tens of millions. On other items in his "Should the Heavens Fall" screed, he appears to be lying. Elsewhere, he satisfies himself with making broad, manipulative statements, managing to turn the theme of his piece - that Bush benefits when people die - into another example of dishonesty, in that he eventually tries to exploit the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq for his own polemical purposes. (Clearly, it's the left and war opponents more generally whose political aims have been frustrated by the failure of US military operations to produce huge humanitarian disasters and massive casualties.) Pitt writes: His clumsy language happens to mischaracterize the issue. Just focusing on the specific question of attempts to acquire nuclear materials for an already-existent program, those who have been paying attention and who are not in the business of writing hysterical opinion pieces are aware the claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear material from Niger and elsewhere stand uncontradicted. British intelligence stands by its own claims - not based on the notorious forged documents - that during the 1990s Iraq sought to restore a formerly useful connection. Pitt writes further: This statement appears to be an even more blatant lie - possibly the result of Pitt's having trusted and built upon the inaccurate advance report on the Truthout.com site he manages: A search of the 858-page Congressional Inquiry document reveals around ten mentions of Iraq, but the only discussion of any connections to Al Qaeda or to September 11 relate either to uncertain intelligence on the famous meeting by an Iraqi official with the hijacker Atta, or the role of Iraq policy in AQ propaganda. Other mentions mainly concern the effect of ongoing no-fly zone operation, the '98 bombing, or the possibility of war with Iraq on certain individuals' thinking or policy positions. In other words, the report doesn't address the subject of Iraq's connections to AQ, and the authors apparently considered the question outside their purview. You can see for yourself, if you care to perform the search: http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/911rpt/index.html More generally, I do not believe that anyone outside of Saddam Hussein and a very few others is in the position to make "blunt" statements about Iraq's lack of connections to AQ or to 9/11. In any event, Iraq's connections to 9/11 were never a component of the Administration's case for war, though it is also clear that Iraq maintained some connections to AQ. How significant they ever were is debatable, but they were never more than a subsidiary element of the Administration's overall case anyway. Even without considering Pitt's dishonesty, he doesn't appear to be the kind of individual whom I'd trust for the assessments of US security that he offers up elsewhere. Predictably, his analysis and his conclusions are narrow and manipulative, where not obviously ridiculous. (We can go into them in detail, if anyone cares to, though we've already strayed far from the topic of this thread.) It's easy to make extreme assertions, especially if unconstrained by truth and any sense of shame or responsibility: So, whose political interests depend on people dying? Soldiers dying (and killing) for no reason would be outrageous and intolerable, but, rather than proving that such has taken place, Pitt has instead cynically defamed the fallen on the basis of his own "lies and exaggerations." In short, Pitt is yet another war opponent who depends on falsehoods to manufacture fury over supposed falsehoods - especially ironic coming from the managing editor of Truthout.com. Come to think of it, the name of the site is another lie.
Three G.I's Killed in Iraq Grenade Attack By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. - NY Times AQUBA, Iraq, July 26 â Three American soldiers were killed and four were wounded this morning when insurgents attacked members of the Fourth Infantry Division as they were guarding a children's hospital in this town about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. The site of the attack is on the eastern fringe of the region where violence against American soldiers since the end of major combat has been the worst. It capped a week of strikes against American troops, including the ambush deaths of four soldiers and the wounding of at least six more, in and around Mosul, where Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by American troops on Tuesday. In Mosul today, American troops used bulldozers to begin to demolish the house after scouring it for clues on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, Reuters reported. The wall surrounding the fortified villa was knocked down and Iraqi workers clambered over the roof, pounding it with sledgehammers. The villa was partly destroyed when American troops attacked it on Tuesday with machine guns, grenades and antitank missiles. In the days following the siege of the home in Mosul, a steady stream of informants' tips have led to major raids, including one in Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown, that resulted in the capture of nearly a dozen people suspected of being the deposed dictator's personal bodyguards. Military officials said the arrests may help American troops in their search for Mr. Hussein. In Baghdad overnight, blasts and gunfire rang out, but the United States military said there were no reports of any deaths. In Baghdad's al-Shoala neighborhood, the commander of Iraq's national police academy, Brig. Ahmed Kadhim, was wounded while leading a raid on suspected hijackers about 1 a.m., The Associated Press reported. Brigadier Kadhim's assistant, Capt. Mushtak Fadhil, said five other officers also were wounded, one critically, when shots were fired as the police confronted five suspects. The suspected hijackers were arrested, he said. A contingent of 450 Spanish troops left the town of Santiago de Compostela today, Agence France-Presse reported. The troops are an advance group of a 1,300-member Spanish contingent that will serve in a multinational force in postwar Iraq. The Spanish will operate under Polish control in the southern regions of Qadisiyah and Najaf. They are to be joined by 1,100 troops from Central American states and are expected to serve for six months. The attack today in Baquba happened about 11 a.m. when a grenade was hurled at American soldiers as they guarded the children's hospital, said Specialist Nicole Thompson, a military spokeswoman in Baghdad. Witnesses said that one attacker threw a single grenade over a wall into the garden of the hospital, but one soldier at the scene disputed that account. Hamid Satar, 27, who left the hospital 10 minutes before the attack, said: "The Americans were sitting in the garden. There were about eight soldiers wearing T-shirts. Some of them were playing cards. Then the grenade came over them." He said that a lot of Iraqis had been in the garden area during the morning, including children, but that the attacker must have waited until they left. "They waited until the place was totally clear of Iraqis and then they threw the grenade," he said. Firas Rashid, 22, who lives nearby, also said the attacker threw only one grenade. He said that after the attack, military officials sealed off the area and were searching people inside the hospital. "They kept everybody inside," he said. Several people said the attacker was no one they knew. This was one of the most serious attacks against Americans since President Bush declared major combat operations to be over on May 1, but there have been other strikes in the area in the past several weeks. The children's hospital faces the Tigris River. Several hours after the attack, five armored vehicles and at least eight smaller military vehicles were on the scene, along with a large number of American soldiers. The street had been blocked off with razor wire. About 60 or 70 Iraqis were milling about outside the cordoned off area. A military translator emerged from the hospital at 6:30 p.m. and spoke to the Iraqis outside. "Nobody is allowed to enter or leave the hospital," he said. "You should go home." He said the hospital had been sealed off, that people inside were being interviewed and he did not know when the hospital would reopen to the public.
This move by member/s of the Iraqi Resistance Movement was implemented in the optimal way, such that there was zero collateral damage... in any Resistance Movement, it makes total sense not to cause a perverse alliance (via collateral damage) between factions of the occupied community and the occupying force... the members of the Iraqi Resistance who eliminated the 3 Americans were thankfully thinking straight when they pulled the attack off, since it would have been tragic to have had young Iraqi kids being killed too... it is infinitely better to just have 3 dead American Occupiers and NO dead Iraqi children, instead of 3 dead American Occupiers and also a depressing pile of dead, innocent Iraqi kids... Irrespective of whether or not you agree with the mission statement of Iraqi Resistance Movement (or for that matter the Palestinian independence movement, the Irish unification movement, the successful anti-Apartheid movement etc etc), you have to take your hat off to the Iraqi Resistance Operation in this instance, for executing a precise targeting resulting in zero collateral damage... the less non-warring life that is lost, the better... This sort of maneuver reminds me of fighters within the French Resistance who did a pretty decent job of eliminating pockets of Occupying Nazis (I am only making a comparison of tactics to minimize collateral damage, not of the relative morality of each situation)...
Victims of trigger-happy Task Force 20 Rage triggered by US raid that claimed five lives Jamie Wilson in Baghdad Tuesday July 29, 2003 The first hint that something might be up came at 1.30pm on Sunday afternoon. A car full of westerners in civilian clothes with cropped military-style haircuts pulled up outside the Al Sa'ah restaurant, two blocks from Prince Rabiah Muhamed al-Habib's house in the wealthy Mansur district of Baghdad. The people going about their business in the sweltering afternoon sun did not know it at the time, but the men sitting in the car watching the street were the best the coalition forces had to offer: members of Task Force 20, the unit responsible for hunting down Saddam Hussein and other key members of the regime. Within two hours soldiers attached to this so-called elite unit had shot and killed at least five people. Their actions have provoked anger towards the coalition in this previously peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood that is likely to simmer for some time to come. According to Ra'fet Saad, 38, a local businessman, the car loitered in the area for two hours. Moments after it pulled away there was a loud explosion from the direction of Mr al-Habib's house. Mr Saad ran to the corner, where he saw special forces descending on the building from every direction. Wearing gas masks, body armour and black T-shirts with brightly coloured identification lettering on the sleeves, they blasted their way into the house. Cover Fifty yards up the street six Humvees had created a partial roadblack at a crossroads. Other troops, some dressed in civilian clothes, fanned out to block the main roads around the house, but crucially not the quieter side streets. The first vehicle to get unlucky was a Chevrolet Malibu. For some reason, the driver did not stop as he approached the roadblock and the soldiers opened fire. Mr Saad had taken cover behind a wall. When he dared to look up, the soldiers were dragging two men away from the car. "I think they were dead," he said. Fifteen minutes later, a Toyota Corona being driven by a man called Mazin, who was disabled and walked with the aid of a frame, arrived in the area. His wife was in the passenger seat and his teenage son in the back. If he had turned left out of the small lane that led to their house, they might all still be alive. Instead, Mazin made the mistake of turning right towards the roadblock. A bullet from the volley of shots fired at the car passed through the windscreen and blew off the right half his head, according to Ahmed Ibrahim, who runs an optician's shop opposite the Al Sa'ah restaurant. Nobody on the street yesterday seemed to know what had happened to his wife or teenage son, only that they had been injured and taken away by the Americans. According to Mr Ibrahim, the soldiers were by now firing indiscriminately. A bullet struck the doorframe of his shop, while two others hit a generator belonging to the restaurant on the other side of the street. Another round hit the fuel tank of his Mercedes. It exploded in flames, setting alight the car parked next to it. The next victim, who was in a red Mitsubishi Pajero landcrusier, was not even driving towards the roadblock. Instead, he had been travelling on a main road more than 150 yards away when he slowed down to see what the commotion was. Two bullets hit him in the chest. Mr Ibrahim said that minutes later more troops had arrived in the area and the shooting had stopped. "One of them told me that they were looking for Ali [another of Saddam Hussein's sons]." Dressed in flowing robes and a black and white headdress, Prince Rabiah was taking the raid on his house calmly yesterday morning. "My people," he said, "want to demonstrate in all Iraq. But we want peace, so I tell them No, we do not want to make a big thing of this." He had spent Sunday in Kut, 50 miles south east of Baghdad, and was not at home when the special forces arrived. The only people in the building when the raid started had been two of his bodyguards, and the Americans had taken them away. But a neighbour told him that when the force arrived they had thrown bombs and there had been a lot of shooting. "When we entered the house everything was upside down," he said, walking into the sitting room where a video recorder and satellite receiver had been pulled from a cabinet. "A lot of things were missing - money, two fax machines, a video camera and cassettes." In another room, two bullets had made holes and spider web patterns in the window. On the floor next to an ornate sideboard were two shotgun cartridges, which had been used to blow the locks off the door. "What do they think? That Saddam Hussein is going to be able to hide in here?" he said pointing at the cabinet. Although the prince admits having known Saddam Hussein - "He respected me very much" - he said he had not seen the former president for many months. "I have no idea why they came here. But if they want to find anybody in this house they just have to knock on the door." But while the prince was taking the raid calmly, elsewhere in Mansur it provoked a reaction that was anything but. "We consider the Americans now as war criminals," said Mahmoud al-Baghdadi, a 32-year-old baker. "They claim to be fighting terrorism, but they cannot defend freedom by killing disabled people." Yaqdan Kadhem, a waiter, said that before he had felt sympathy for the Americans, but now he supported the attacks on US troops. "Until now I was against Saddam Hussein, but now I hate the Americans for what they did yesterday." The coalition refused to comment on events in Mansur, except to say the raid had been carried out by Task Force 20.
I note that our soldiers were wearing civilian clothes and not wearing military uniform... this was the reason we gave to create Guantanamo for housing "illegal enemy combattants", who were deprived of the protections afforded by the Geneva Convention...
After giving a lot of thought to Kymer's opinions and political attitudes, I have finally come to the conclusion that it is pretty unlikely that he will be doing any volunteer work on behalf of any Democratic candidate that will oppose GWB in next year's Presidential election (unless Hillary throws her hat in the ring, which is pretty unlikely at this point). But I would be interested in Kymer's opinion of Arnold in the California "recall race". Is Arnold really a Republican? Seems like he may be a sheep in wolf's clothing. Kymer, what's the deal? You like this guy? Or is he a leftist undercover "Kennedy" trying to sneak in behind enemy lines? AAA, you too must have an interesting take on this deal. Peace, RS
[Paraphrased from GW Bush] "You try an' kill my daddy, and I'm gonna kill yer kids and send you a picture of 'em!"