Enduring Operation Freedom

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arjun_m,

``So are you saying the US should go around preemptively attacking everyone it`s intelligence says made a funny face at them?``

No, just that doing business with unsavory characters, and indeed supporting them to the extent that you yourself become rather unsavory, removes all rights to justly complaining when you yourself find yourself the target, rather than the person doing the shooting.

So get over it.

``So are you saying the US should go around preemptively attacking everyone it`s intelligence says made a funny face at them? sound like what happened in iraq...bet you opposed that... ``

Ahhh...the last bastion of the hopeless...looking for contradictions where non exist.

I was simply saying that the cost-benefit of supporting Saudi in face of the consequences ruled in favor of continuing the support. It seems like the cost of business has gone up big time...it is only those of us in the dark who were actually surprised by the attack...but rather than ask just what the hell are our officials doing, we tow their line like good obedient citizens.

We buy their stupid rhetoric that OBL is out to destroy the west or conquer it...he can`t even manage to hold on to a bunch of rocks, and this is the threat? It`s all about American-Saudi relations, but the spin masters have made a fine story out of this mess. Chapter 1, 9-11. Chapter 2, Afghanistan. Okay, I`m with you so far. Chapter 3, Iraq...oops, now huge plot holes are begging to emerge.

``Knowing someone is a scumbag and intends to do you harm is different from the person in question actually attacking you...``

No, knowing someone is a scumbag, and knowing that supporting this scumbag runs the risk of attack from another scumbag because of that support should make you expect an attack sometime or another.

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Re # 38
``Then there`s people like you who fall for the politician’s lies whole and start taking sides.``

In the battle between good and evil, civilization and chaos, all sane men have to take sides. Neutrality is not an option. Politicians lie, eyes don`t. I was at WTC a mere week before 9/11 and was there this past summer. Three employees of my company died. And you wonder why I take sides. To America-bashers, 9/11 may have been the price of doing business. To us now, it is our business to end the war that began that day. As a prime minister of India said years ago, `with you, without you, or in spite of you` we intend to end this war.

sigalph235,

``Our cities were turned into graveyards on 9/11/01; 3,000 of our brothers, sisters, and co-workers were killed in cold blood that day: frankly, we don`t need lectures on defending Western civilization from those whose very defense has been a gift from us, the American taxpayers, since the beginning of the Second World War.``

Blah blah blah. Problem with this viewpoint dude is that it assumes the attacks came from a vacuum. Our intelligence community knew who Osama was, and what he wanted. They simply reasoned that their support for the ruling Junta in Saudia was not threatened by this little crazy man, who used to be their man btw, so they decided to ignore him.

Well, looks like Osama got peoples attention all right. The problem is, this is between Osama and bunch of oil hungry politicians and we nobody’s are caught in the crossfire. It`s just awesome how shrewdly the politicians are playing 9-11 for all it`s worth, spinning it into something like an alien invasion when it`s simply a little despot wannabe who learned how to poke America in the eye - what a clever monkey.

Then there`s people like you who fall for the politician’s lies whole and start taking sides. Wow...I`m amazed. 9-11 to these people is the cost of doing business. Before the cost wasn`t so high. Now it seems like inflation has kicked in big time. Get over it. Anyhow, if you want to get all emotional like, why aren`t you p*ssed at this government for so callously using these lost lives to further their own political agenda?

And quite frankly, in a post-Iraq world (carnage there is worse than 9-11 in fact), we the normal sane citizens of the world don`t understand just WHO America is protecting us from.

re: SR

Below is the article by Mark Danner.
*************************************************************************** Delusions in Baghdad by Mark Danner

1.
Autumn in Baghdad is cloudy and gray. Trapped in rush-hour traffic one October morning, without warning my car bucked up and back, like a horse whose reins had been brutally pulled. For a jolting instant the explosion registered only as the absence of sound, a silent blow to the stomach; and then a beat later, as hearing returned, a faint tinkling chorus: the store windows, all along busy Karrada Street, trembling together in their sashes. They were tinkling still when over the rooftops to the right came the immense eruption of oily black smoke.

Such dark plumes have become the beacons, the lighthouses, of contemporary Baghdad, and we rushed to follow, bumping over the center divider, vaulting the curb, screeching through the honking chaos of Seventies-vintage American cars, trailing the blasting horns and screaming tires for two, three, four heart-pounding moments until, barely three blocks away, at one end of a pleasant residential square, behind a gaggle of blue-shirted Iraqi security men running in panic about the grass, shouting, waving their AK-47s, we came upon two towering conflagrations, rising perhaps a dozen feet in the air, and, perfectly outlined in the bright orange flames, like skeletons preserved in amber, the blackened frames of what moments before had been a van and a four-wheel drive.

Between the two great fires rose a smaller one, eight or nine feet high, enclosing a tangled mass of metal. Pushing past the Iraqis, who shouted angrily, gesturing with their guns, I ran forward, toward the flames: the heat was intense. I saw slabs of smashed wall, hunks of rubble, glass, and sand scattered about, and behind it all an immense curtain of black smoke obscuring everything: the building, part of the International Red Cross compound, that stood there, the wall that had guarded it, the remains of the people who, four minutes before, had lived and worked there.

``Terrorism,`` the US Army lieutenant colonel had told me ruefully the week before, ``is Grand Theater,`` and, as a mustached security man yanked me roughly by the arm, spinning me away from the flames, I saw that behind me the front rows had quickly filled: photographers with their long lenses, khaki vests, and shoulder bags struggled to push their way through the Iraqi security men, who, growing angrier, shouted and cursed, pushing them back. Swinging their AK-47s, they managed to form a ragged perimeter against what was now a jostling, roiling crowd, while camera crews in the vanguard surged forward. Now a US Army Humvee appeared; four American soldiers leaped out and plunged into the crowd, assault rifles raised, and began to scream, in what I had come to recognize as a characteristic form of address, ``GET. THE FUCK. BACK! GET. THE FUCK. BACK!`` Very young men in tan camouflage fatigues, armed, red-faced, flustered; facing them, the men and women of the world press, Baghdad division, assembled in their hundreds in less than a quarter of an hour: in the front row, those who, like me, had had the dumb luck to be in the neighborhood; behind them network crews who had received a quick tip from an embassy contact or an Iraqi stringer, or had simply heard or felt the explosion and pounded their way up to the hotel roof, scanning the horizon anxiously, locating the black beacon, and racing off to cover the story—or, as Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo put it bitterly, to ``make the story. Here, media is the total message: I now have an understanding of McLuhan you wouldn`t believe. Kill twenty people here? In front of that lens it`s killing twenty thousand.``

Behind the flames and the dark smoke, amid the shattered walls and twisted metal, a dozen people lay dead, many of whom had been unlucky enough to find themselves passing the front of the International Red Cross compound when, at half past eight in the morning, a man later claimed to be of Saudi nationality drove an ambulance with Red Cross markings up to the security checkpoint and detonated what must have been several thousand pounds of explosives, collapsing forty feet of the protective wall and sending a huge sandbag barrier cascading forward.[1] The Red Cross compound, with its security wall and sandbags and manned checkpoints, was a ``hardened target``—as were, indeed, the three Baghdad police stations that, within the next forty-five minutes, suicide bombers struck, in the neighborhoods of al-Baya`a, al-Shaab, and al-Khadra.

In the rhetoric of security, all of these attacks failed dismally. ``From what our indications are,`` Brigadier General Mark Hertling told Fox News that afternoon, ``none of those bombers got close to the target.`` In the rhetoric of politics, however, the attacks were a brilliant coup de théâtre. In less than an hour, four men, by killing forty people, including one American soldier and twenty Iraqi police, had succeeded in dominating news coverage around the world, sending television crews rushing about Baghdad in pursuit of the latest plume of smoke and broadcasting the message, via television screens in a hundred countries, first and foremost the United States, that Baghdad, US official pronouncements notwithstanding, remained a war zone.

Within a week, as members of the Red Cross left Iraq and many of the few remaining international organizations followed close behind, the attackers had set in motion, at the ``highest levels`` of the Bush administration, a ``reevaluation`` of American policy. Within two weeks, even as President Bush went on vowing publicly that the United States ``would not be intimidated,`` he abruptly recalled L. Paul Bremer, the American administrator in Iraq, who rushed back to Washington so hurriedly he left the prime minister of Poland, one of America`s few major allies in Iraq, waiting forlornly for an appointment that never came.

After two days of intensive consultations, administration officials unveiled a new policy. They decided to discard what had been a carefully planned, multiyear process that would gradually transform the authoritarian Iraqi state into a democracy—seven clearly defined steps intended to allow democratic parties, practices, and institutions to take root, develop, and grow, eventually leading to a new constitution written and ratified by the Iraqi people and, finally, a nationwide election and handover of power from American administrators to the elected Iraqi politicians it produced. The administration put in its place a hastily improvised rush to ``return power to the Iraqis.`` In practice, this meant that in seven months the United States would hand over sovereignty to unelected Iraqis (presumably those on the American-appointed Governing Council, many of them former exiles, who had been pressing for such a rapid granting of power since before the war). Elections and a constitution would come later.[2] Despite President Bush`s fervent protestations to the contrary, this was clearly a dramatic change in his policy of ``bringing democracy to Iraq``—and, by extension, of making Iraq the first step in what he recently described as his ``forward strategy of democracy in the Middle East.``

If victory in war is defined as accomplishing the political goals for which military means were originally brought to bear, then eight months after it invaded Iraq, the United States remains far from victory. If the political goal of the war in Iraq was to remove Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime and establish in their place a stable, democratic government—then that goal, during the weeks I spent in Iraq in late October and early November, seemed to be growing ever more distant.

When I arrived in Baghdad, Iraqi insurgents were staging about fifteen attacks a day on American troops; by the time I left the number of daily attacks had more than doubled, to thirty-five a day. Though military leaders like General Ricardo Sanchez, the overall commander, have repeatedly denigrated the attacks on his troops as ``strategically and operationally insignificant,`` those attacks led the CIA to conclude, in a report leaked in mid-November, that the ``US-led drive to rebuild the country as a democracy could collapse unless corrective actions are taken immediately.``[3] The United States fields by far the most powerful military in the world, spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, and as I write a relative handful of lightly armed insurgents, numbering in the tens of thousands or perhaps less, using the classic techniques of guerrilla warfare and suicide terrorism, are well on the way toward defeating it.

``What we have here,`` Lieutenant Colonel William Darley told me, ``is basically a constabulary action. I mean, this is pretty much the Old West here. Peacekeeping. Where are the regiment on regiment, division on division engagements? We`ve seen almost nothing above the squad level. Basically this is not a real war.`` I heard this view, in various versions, expressed by American military men all over Iraq, from staff officers to combat commanders to lieutenants on the ground. Most of these men I found deeply impressive: well trained, well schooled, extremely competent. What joined them together, as the war grew steadily worse for American forces, was an inability, or perhaps a reluctance, to recognize what was happening in Iraq as a war.

``There`s a deep cultural bias in the United States that if a military doesn`t resemble ours, it`s no good,`` the military strategist George Freidman of the private intelligence company Stratfor told me. ``We have the strongest conventional forces in the world. So no one fights us conventionally. They fight us asymmetrically.``

In Iraq, asymmetric warfare has meant a combination of guerrilla attacks on US and other coalition forces and terrorist attacks on a variety of prominent nonmilitary targets, including hotels, embassies, and international organizations. Beginning late this spring, the guerrilla attacks were centered in Baghdad and the so-called ``Sunni Triangle`` north and west of the capital but, since mid-autumn, they have increasingly spread to the north and, more slowly, the south of the country. Since late summer, highly effective terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings, have grown steadily more audacious and sophisticated, particularly in their use of the international press to multiply their political effect. In responding to both lines of attack, US intelligence—the ``center of gravity`` in any guerrilla war—has seemed poor or nonexistent.

The guerrilla attacks have built on, and worsened, the American occupation`s unpopularity among many Iraqis, capitalizing on, among other things, the US military`s failure to provide security during the early weeks of the occupation and the daily humiliations and occasional brutalities that come with the presence of an occupying army. The terrorist attacks have served to consolidate and then worsen the international isolation the Americans have labored under since the catastrophic diplomatic decisions that led up to the war and have succeeded in depriving the coalition of additional military forces and international help in rebuilding the country.

Terrorism is certainly—as the lieutenant colonel put it—Grand Theater. Or to put it a slightly different way, terrorism is a form of talk. To hear what is being said, one must look at the sequence of major bombings in Iraq over the last several months:

August 7, Jordanian Embassy: A suicide car bomber kills nineteen people.
August 19, United Nations Headquarters: A suicide truck bomber kills twenty-three, including the UN`s chief envoy in Iraq.
September 22, UN Headquarters: A suicide car bomber kills two and wounds nineteen.
October 9, police station: A suicide car bomber kills ten.
October 12, Baghdad Hotel: A suicide car bomber kills eight and wounds thirty-two.
October 14, Turkish Embassy: A suicide car bomber kills two and wounds thirteen.
October 27, Red Cross Headquarters and four police stations: Car bombers kill about forty and wound two hundred.
November 12, Italian Carabinieri Headquarters, Nasiriya: A truck bomber kills thirty-one.
Behind these attacks—I list only the major ones—one can see a rather methodical intention to sever, one by one, with patience, care, and precision, the fragile lines that still tie the occupation authority to the rest of the world. Suicide bombers struck at the countries that supported the Americans in the war (Jordan), that support the occupation with troops (Italy) or professed a willingness to do so (Turkey). They struck at the heart of an ``international community`` that could, with increased involvement, help give the occupation both legitimacy (the United Nations) and material help in rebuilding the country (the Red Cross). Finally they repeatedly struck at Iraqis collaborating with occupation authorities, whether as members of the American-selected Governing Council (several of whom lived in the Baghdad Hotel) or as policemen trained and paid by Americans.

By striking at the Jordanians, the bombers helped to ensure that no Arab country will contribute troops to support the occupation. By striking at the Turks, they helped force them to withdraw their controversial offer to send soldiers. By striking at the United Nations and the Red Cross, they not only forced the members of those two critical institutions to flee the country but led most other nongovernmental organizations, who would have been central to supplying expertise and resources to rebuilding Iraq, to leave as well. And by striking at the homes of several members of the Governing Council (wounding one member and, in a separate incident, assassinating another), they forced those officials to join the Americans behind their isolating wall of security, further separating them from Iraqis and underlining their utter political reliance on the Americans.

``Signs and symbols,`` the Italian security officer said. ``Terrorism is nothing but signs and symbols.`` He looked at the sandbags and barbed wire, the rows of concrete Jersey barriers and armed guards that surrounded his embassy. ``None of this will matter,`` he told me. ``If they want to hit us, they will, and though they won`t get to the building, it will still be a victory because it will kill people and make news. Terror,`` he said, ``is quite predictable.`` What, I asked, did the signs and symbols mean? He spoke matter-of-factly: that anyone who helps the Americans will be a target; that the Americans cannot protect their allies and provide security to Iraqis; that the disorder is growing and that deciding to work with the Americans, who in their isolation are looking like a less-than-dominant and in any event ephem-eral presence, is not the most prudent of bets; that the war, whatever fine words President Bush may pronounce from his aircraft carrier, is not over. Terror, he said, has a logic of its own. Two weeks after we spoke a suicide bomber killed nineteen Italians at Nasiriya.

2.
Autumn in Baghdad is sunny and bright. Drive about the bustling city of tan, sun-dried brick and you will hear the noise of honking horns and see crowded markets, the streets overwhelmed by an enormous postwar expansion of traffic, the sidewalks cluttered with satellite disks and other new products flooding into the newly opened Iraqi market. During the last several months, however, a new city has taken root amid these busy streets and avenues, spreading rapidly as it superimposes itself over the old tan brick metropolis: a new grim city of concrete. It is constructed of twelve-foot-high gray concrete barriers, endless roadblocks manned by squads of men with Kalashnikovs, walls of enormous steel-reinforced bags of earth and rubble and mile upon mile of coiled razor wire, and studded here and there with tanks rooted behind sandbags and watchful soldiers in combat fatigues. This city has a vaguely postmodern, apocalyptic feel, ``a bit of Belfast here, a bit of Cyprus there, here and there a sprinkling of West Bank,`` as one network cameraman put it to me.

Many streets, including several of the grand ceremonial avenues of Saddam`s capital, are now entirely lined with raw concrete a dozen feet high, giving the driver the impression of advancing down a stone tube. Behind these walls entire chunks of Bagh-dad have effectively vanished, notably the great park and building complex that had housed Saddam`s Republi-can Palace and now comprises the so-called Green Zone—a four-and-a-half-square-mile concrete bunker that has at its heart the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

To enter the palace you must secure, first, an appointment—hard to get, and made immeasurably harder by the fact that most members of the CPA are difficult or impossible to reach by telephone—and then make your way down several hundred yards of sidewalk lined with razor wire. Your journey will be broken by three checkpoints, two military (concrete cordons, sandbags, machine guns) and one civilian. At two of these you present two identifications and submit to full body searches, standing with your legs parted and arms extended and staring straight ahead, in a ritual I found myself repeating, on a busy day in Baghdad, a dozen or more times. Finally, after securing an identification badge, you must wait for a military escort to drive you to the palace, where yet another series of checks and searches will be performed.

Inside Saddam`s Republican Palace —his huge likeness in the central atrium is discreetly masked by a large blue cloth—you will find, amid the dark marble floors and sconces and chandeliers, a great many Americans striding purposefully about, some in uniform but many in casual civilian clothing: chinos, jeans, sport shirts. They look bright, crisp, self-assured, and extremely young; they look, in other words, like what they are: junior staffers from Washington, from the Capitol, the departments and various agencies and think tanks. After all the combat fatigues on the city streets (``During my two weeks here,`` an oil industry contractor told me, ``I`ve not seen one American who wasn`t in uniform``), it is a bit of a shock to find this great horde of young American civilians secreted in Saddam`s marble-lined hideaway, now become Baghdad`s own Emerald City.

I spoke to one young expert from the Governance Department at some length about the Americans` ``seven-point plan`` to install democracy in Iraq, which was then stalled at point three: writing the constitution. (To summarize very crudely, the Shia, the majority on the Governing Council and in the country, were insisting that the writers of the constitution be chosen in a nationwide election; the others, fearing the Shia`s numerical dominance, were pushing for the writers to be ``selected`` under various methods. This deadlock over the constitution is a precise reflection of the larger ``governance problem`` in Iraq—beginning with Shia numerical dominance—that would need to be resolved if Iraq is ever to become a working democracy.) I found myself impressed with the young woman`s knowledge and commitment. In general, the CPA members seem dedicated and well-meaning—they`d have to be, to come to Baghdad; they are also entirely isolated, traveling twice daily by military-driven bus within the bunkered compound from their places of work in the bunkered palace to their places of rest in the bunkered Rasheed Hotel.

Or rather they made that trip until October 26, when, just before six in the morning, a person or persons unknown towed a small blue two-wheeled trailer—to any observer (including, presumably, the soldier manning the checkpoint a couple hundred yards away), it looked like a generator, a common sight in electricity-starved Iraq—up to the park across from which the Rasheed stood resplendent behind its impressive concrete barriers, quickly opened the trailer`s doors, turned it around, and directed it toward the hotel, and ran off, no doubt looking back to gaze in satisfaction a few moments later when a dozen or so converted French-made air-to-surface missiles whooshed out of their tubes and began peppering the rooms in which the Americans running the occupation slept, wounding seventeen people, killing one (a lieutenant colonel), and coming within a few yards of killing the visiting Paul L. Wolfowitz, United States deputy secretary of defense and mastermind of the Iraq war.

My friend in Governance was thrown from her bed and, finding her door jammed shut by the blast damage, and taking ``one look at the smoke coming from under that jammed door and realizing if I didn`t get out of there I was going to die,`` she climbed out on the ledge and crept along it, ten floors up, to the room next door and the smoke-filled, chaotic hallway beyond. The Rasheed was evacuated and many of its former occupants found themselves sleeping on quickly assembled cots in Saddam`s palace. As for my friend`s ``seven-point plan,`` two weeks later President Bush decided to abandon it. Instead of confronting the problem that had blocked the writing of a new Iraqi constitution—the question of how the fact of Shia numerical dominance, and other unresolved conflicts in the Iraqi state, would be integrated into a functioning Iraqi democracy—the President, faced with mount- ing attacks from Iraqis opposed to the new political dispensation he had declared himself committed to create, decided to abandon the effort.

Security underlies everything in Iraq; it is the fault line running squarely beneath the occupation and the political world that will emerge from it. As I look back, perhaps my most frightening moment in the country came not at the Red Cross bombing, or at an ambush on the highway between Falluja and Ramadi where five civilians were killed, or at various other scenes of violence of one kind or another, but at a press conference the afternoon of the Rasheed attack, when General Martin E. Dempsey, the impressive commander of the First Infantry Division, characterized the rocket launcher—the cleverly disguised weapon that some unknown persons had used to pierce successfully the huge security perimeter around the Rasheed and thereby kill and wound, under the noses of tens of thousands of US soldiers, the Americans who were supposedly running Iraq, and nearly kill the deputy secretary of defense—as ``not very sophisticated...a science project, made in a garage with a welder, a battery, and a handful of wire.`` What frightened me was the possibility that General Dempsey—a sophisticated man who no doubt had read the literature on counterinsurgency and knew well ``the lessons`` of the British in Malaya and the French in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam, but who, like almost every other impressive American commander in Iraq, had been trained to fight with, and against, large armored formations—was aware of the condescension evident in his tone.

``The idea behind these stay-behind insurgent groups is that they`re clandestine, they use what`s available—an old drainpipe, whatever,`` said a private security officer working for an American television network who, like many of the security professionals in Iraq, was a veteran of Britain`s elite Special Air Service. ``They don`t need to be sophisticated, they need to be effective—and that device that hit the Rasheed was very effective.`` Raymond Bonner, a New York Times reporter, made a somewhat broader point: ``The good news is it was a science project put together in a garage. The bad news is it was a science project put together in a garage.``

Ten days later, when a colleague, a strong advocate of the United States` invasion, declared to me with some impatience, ``The United States will not lose. The United States has absolute military superiority in Iraq!,``[4] I remembered Bonner`s comment. In view of the progress of the war against the US coalition—the spreading activities of the opposition, the growing sophistication of their methods, the increasing numbers of Americans being killed—is the fact that the United States has ``absolute military superiority`` in Iraq good or bad news? All differences aside (and there are a great many differences), people commonly made the same point about Vietnam; but if it is true that ``the United States had absolute military superiority in Vietnam,`` then what exactly do those words mean—and what do they tell us about those who utter them?

3.
Fall in Falluja is dusty and bright. Here, on an average day in late October, insurgents attacked American soldiers eight times, twice the rate of a month before, according to General Chuck Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. The method of choice was IEDs—``improvised explosive devices,`` in military parlance —planted, presumably, by FRLs, or ``former regime loyalists.`` On the road leading into town, just emerging from the cloverleaf off the main highway, I saw the aftermath of one such attack. Late that afternoon, as an American armored convoy rumbled up the highway into the city, someone set off what the general described as

a very sophisticated device, three barrels of flammable material rigged to a triggering mechanism, using a remote-controlled trigger. As our squad was clearing the cloverleaf, the individuals set off the device, killed a paratrooper, and then some individuals directed fire at us with AK-47s from the houses.
General Swannack`s men dismounted, returned fire, stormed the houses, and arrested several civilians, leading them roughly away in flex cuffs. It was a typical day in Falluja, with a typical score: one dead American soldier, two dead civilians, several civilians wounded, several arrested, with an indeterminate number of family members, neighbors, and friends of those killed, wounded, and arrested left furious at the Americans and nursing strong grievances, which tribal honor, an especially strong force in Falluja, now demanded they personally avenge—by killing more Americans. As for the handful of ``individuals`` who had set off the device and opened fire on the Americans, they managed—as they do in all but a few such ambushes—to get away clean.

As I write, 423 Americans have died in Iraq since the United States invaded in March and more than 2,300 have been wounded there, many grievously; and the rate at which Americans are being killed and wounded is increasing. But while these tolls are having a discernible effect on President Bush`s popularity among Americans, the major goal of this kind of warfare is not only to kill and wound Americans but to increase Iraqi recruits, both active and passive, who will oppose the occupation; its major product, that is, is political. ``The point,`` said General Swannack, ``is to get the Americans to fire back and hopefully they`ll get some Iraqi casualties out of that and they can publicize that.``

After first estimating the guerrilla strength in and around Falluja at 20,000, the general revised his figure: ``Probably about a thousand people out there really want to attack us and kill us and another nineteen thousand or so really really don`t like us.`` Such estimates vary wildly around Iraq, depending on whom you ask. General Sanchez recently put the total number of the opposition nationwide at five thousand. Whatever the numbers, the guerrillas` main business is to make them grow, particularly the number of strong sympathizers; and all evidence suggests that thus far they are succeeding.

Saddam`s Iraq was a national security state dominated by the interlocking intelligence services of the government and the elite security units of the army, all of it rooted in the enormous Baath Party, a highly elaborated structure that over a half-century spread and proliferated into every institution in the country and that originally grew from a complex network of conspiratorial cells of three to seven members. Saddam`s elite Republican Guard numbered 80,000; his even more select Special Republican Guard numbered 16,000; his Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary force—in effect, Saddam`s brownshirts—numbered 40,000. The Mukhabarat and the various intelligence services, of which there were perhaps a dozen, numbered thousands more. All of these men were highly trained, well armed, and tested for their political loyalty. Few of them died in the war.

In May, in an astonishing decision that still has not been adequately explained, American administrator L. Paul Bremer vastly increased the number of willing Iraqi foot soldiers by abruptly dissolving the regular Iraqi army, which had been established by King Faisal I in 1921, and thereby sent out into bitter shame and unemployment 350,000 of those young Iraqis who were well trained, well armed, and deeply angry at the Americans. Add to these a million or so tons of weapons and munitions of all sorts, including rockets and missiles, readily available in more than a hundred mostly unguarded arms depots around the country, as well as vast amounts of money stockpiled during thirty-five years in power (notably on March 18, when Saddam sent three tractor trailers to the Central Bank and relieved it of more than a billion dollars in cash), and you have the makings of a well-manned, well-funded insurgency.

During the months since the fall of Baghdad in April, that insurgency has grown and evolved. Its methods have moved from assassinations of isolated US soldiers, to attacks on convoys with small arms, to increasingly sophisticated and frequent ambushes of convoys with remote-controlled explosives and attacks on helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades and missiles. While there seems to be some regional coordination among groups, it is clear that the opposition is made up of many different organizations, some regionally based, some local; some are explicitly Saddamist, some more broadly Baathist, some Islamist, and some frankly anti-Saddam and nationalist. ``I don`t see a vision by these disparate groups of insurgents or partisans,`` said Ahmed S. Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College who has closely studied the opposition. ``But at this stage they do not need one. They are making our stay uncomfortable, they have affected our calculus and are driving a wedge between us. What I know is the coalition is losing ground among Iraqis.`` Within and among these groupings a competitive politics now exists, an armed politics that will evolve and develop, depending on how successful they are in attacking the Americans and forcing them to adjust their policies and, eventually, to leave the country.

By now much evidence exists, including documents apparently prepared by Iraqi intelligence services, to suggest that this insurgency, at least in its broad outlines, was planned before the war and that the plan included looting, sabotage, and assassination of clerics.[5] Particularly damaging was the looting, in which government ministries and other public buildings, including museums, libraries, and universities, were thoroughly ransacked, down to the copper pipes and electrical wiring in the walls, and then burned, and the capital was given over to weeks of utter lawlessness while American soldiers stood by and watched. This was an enormously important political blow against the occupation, undermining any trust or faith Iraqis might have had in their new rulers and destroying any chance the occupiers had to establish their authority. Most of all, the looting created an overwhelming sense of insecurity and trepidation, a sense that the insurgents, with their bombings and attacks, have built on to convince many Iraqis that the Americans have not achieved full control and may well not stay long enough to attain it.

All of this is another way of saying that if security is the fault line running beneath political development in Iraq, then politics is the fault line running beneath security. By now the failures in planning and execution that have dogged the occupation—the lack of military police, the refusal to provide security in the capital, the dissolution of the Iraqi army—are well known.[6] All have originated in Washington, many born of struggles between the leading departments of government, principally the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, which the White House has never managed to resolve. (The most obvious product of these struggles was the President`s decision, barely two months before the invasion, to discard the year of occupation planning by the State De- partment and shift control to the Pentagon, which proved itself wholly unprepared to take on the task.)

In Iraq, after the Big Bang of the American invasion, a new political universe is slowly being born. Part of this Iraqi political universe is called the Governing Council, and it does its work behind the concrete barriers of the Green Zone. Another part works at the level of nascent local government throughout the country. Still another works in the mosques of the south and among the Shiite religious establishment known as the Hawza. And yet another part—now a rather large and powerful part—is armed and clandestine and is making increasingly sophisticated and effective use of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, hoping to force the Americans from the country and claim its share of power. The Americans seek to define the armed claimants as illegitimate—essentially, as not part of the recognized universe at all. But in order to enforce that definition—to confine the game to the actors they regard as legitimate—the Americans must prove themselves able to make use of their power, both military and political, more effectively.

As I write, on November 19, US military forces in Iraq are conducting Operation Iron Hammer, striking with warplanes and artillery bases thought to be occupied by Iraqi insurgents. American television broadcasts are filled with dramatic footage of huge explosions illuminating the night sky. In Tikrit, Saddam`s political base and a stronghold of the opposition, the Americans staged a military show of force, sending tanks and other armored vehicles rumbling through the main street. ``They need to understand,`` Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell told ABC News, ``it`s more than just Humvees we`ll be using in these attacks.``

The armed opposition in Iraq seems unlikely to be impressed. However many insurgents the Americans manage to kill in bombing runs and artillery barrages, the toll on civilians, in death and disruption, is also likely to be high, as will damage to the fragile sense of normalcy that Americans are struggling to achieve and the opposition forces are determined to destroy. Large-scale armored warfare looks and sounds impressive, inspiring overwhelming fear; but it is not discriminate, which makes it a blunt and ultimately self-defeating instrument to deploy against determined guerrillas. In general, the American military, the finest and most powerful in the world, is not organized and equipped to fight this war, and the part of it that is—the Special Forces—are almost entirely occupied in what seems a never-ending hunt for Saddam. For American leaders, and particularly President Bush, this has become the quest for the Holy Grail: finding Saddam will be an enormous political boon. For the American military, this quest has the feel of a traditional kind of war not wholly suited to what they find in Iraq. ``We are a hierarchy and we like to fight hierarchies,`` says military strategist John Arquilla. ``We think if we cut off the head we can end this.``

Whatever the political rewards of finding Saddam, they will not likely include putting a definitive end to the insurgency in Iraq.[7] ``The Americans need to get out of their tanks, get out from behind their sunglasses,`` a British military officer, a veteran of Northern Ireland told me. ``They need to get on the ground where they can get to know people and encourage them to tell them where the bad guys are.`` As I write, operations on the ground seem to be moving in the opposite direction. In any event it is difficult to impress an opponent with a military advance plainly meant to cover a political retreat.

President Bush`s audacious project in Iraq was always going to be difficult, perhaps impossible, but without political steadfastness and resilience, it had no chance to succeed. This autumn in Baghdad, a ruthless insurgency, growing but still in its infancy, has managed to make the President retreat from his project, and has worked, with growing success, to divide Iraqis from the Americans who claim to govern them. These insurgents cannot win, but by seizing on Washington`s mistakes and working relentlessly to widen the fault lines in occupied Iraq, they threaten to prevent what President Bush sent the US military to achieve: a stable, democratic, and peaceful Iraq, at the heart of a stable and democratic Middle East.

—November 19, 2003

Notes
[1] For the Saudi claim, see Mohammad Bazzi, ``Saudis Suspected in 2 Iraq Attacks,`` Newsday, November 11, 2003.

[2] See Susan Sachs, ``US Is Set to Return Power to Iraqis as Early as June,`` The New York Times, November 15, 2003.

[3] See Jonathan S. Landay, ``CIA Has a Bleak Analysis of Iraq,`` Philadelphia Inquirer, November 12, 2003.

[4] Christopher Hitchens made the comment, in a debate with me at the University of California at Berkeley on November 4. See ``Has Bush Made Us Safer? Iraq, Terror and American Power,`` at webcast.berkeley.edu/events /archive.html.

[5] See Michael Hirsh, Rod Nordland, and Mark Hosenball, ``About-Face in Iraq,`` Newsweek, November 24, 2003; and Douglas Jehl, ``Plan for Guerrilla Action May Have Predated War,`` The New York Times, November 15, 2003.

[6] See Mark Fineman, Robin Wright, and Doyle McManus, ``Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace,`` Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2003; and David Rieff, ``Blueprint for a Mess,`` The New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2003.

[7] See Ahmed S. Hashim, ``The Sunni Insurgency in Iraq,`` Middle East Institute Policy Brief, August 15, 2003, who notes that the ``elimination of Saddam and his dynasty may demoralize pro-regime insurgents but may actually embolden anti-regime and anti-US insurgents who may have held back in the past...because of the barely submerged fears that the regime could come back.``

Re # 34

Couldn`t have said it better myself. Didn`t know of the comment by the late Menachem Begin but how astoundingly on the point! Thanks for pinting it out.

Romair #6

`` Could you highlight the, ``numerous`` cases. ``

Ahmed Ressam - a Canadian of Algerian origin was caught in 1999 before y2k

`` The US policies are quite counter-productive. The people who enter the USA legally are generally well-wishers of the USA. All these restrictions against them, are just pissing them off, and the USA is losing its well-wishers. ``

Like those 19 hijackers .................

A bare knuckled campiagn against Pakistani illegals in USA, Canada, Australia and UK will send the most powerful message to Pakistani state to end support for Al Qaida and Taliban.
It is more effective than military force.

#23 by sigalph235 on December 2, 2003

Let`s see things in perspective regarding the Arar case. An Arab civilian (Arar) was tortured by an Arab government (Syria). And, once again, America is being held responsible !!!

The `intelligentsia` won`t take the real culprit to task

---

the Syrian government. They are copiously shedding crocodile`s urine at the torture of one Arab, but were mysteriously silent when thousands of Arab civilians were massacred by Hafez Al Assad`s regime at Hama, Syria in 1982.

BOTTOMLINE:

Torturing an Arab is wrong if it can somehow be blamed on the United States. Otherwise it`s OK.

This brings to mind another episode: the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila. The fact of the matter is this was a case of Christian Arab brutality on Muslim Arabs. So guess who was blamed

---

Ariel Sharon! That prompted Prime Minister Menachem Begin to remark: ``Arabs kill Arabs and they blame the Jew.``

ferozk #31

Unfortunately the link http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16862 is not accessable at present. Will retry also. However, I did find this piece which is also great?

And speaking of good pieces written on the subject, I find Lewis Lapham`s Road to Babylon very incisive and well written.

...SR

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re: SR

Please read this article by Mark Danner (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16862)

This has to be one of the better analysis of the Iraq war and its occupation to have seen the light of day. The Americans might win the war and lose politically and if Clausewitz is quoted, then what was the end result of all of this?

Ciao

re: SR # 28 & 29

That quote from Alexander Fraser Tytler`s ``The Decline and Fall of the Athenian
Republic`` was really apt. There is a progressional cycle in history and the rise and fall of great powers follows this pattern. A good case study is Ancient Rome and how it went from a republic to an empire and the role of the Punic Wars in this transformation. Then there is the example of Athens and the Delian League and if that is not enough, there is story of the Christian church and the Habsburg Empire. Moving on, we get to France and beyond France, we see Great Britain as it sorted out its struggles with constitutional monarchy and emerged as a world just as Napoleon`s France was in a decline. Let us not forget to include the Muslims in this rise and fall of empires, because they followed the same path. We see the same pattern lift the United States out of the wilderness of the North America and make it a major power on the steps of the Palace of Versailles and now we see the similarity in China only knowing fully well how it will end.

The music (politics) keeps playing and the people (nations) dance the waltz and once in a while, they change their partners (alliances). The drums of empire and glory play on, ever louder and they reach a tulmut so deafening that we cannot hear the sound of waves crashing below the edge of the cliff. Blinded by the myth of our egoism, the march of folly continues to a mutual death as the lemmings follow one another over the cliff and to their deaths.

As to Stan Goff, he has been writing articles on Iraq for a while now and that article, having read it, was a clarion call to reality. Recently, the Americans claimed that 58 Iraqis were killed in a fire fight with the occupation forces. It starts always starts like this and then the numbers creep up and the whole idea boils down into an explanation known as the ``body count``. Soon the war and the dying over shadows the politics and the direction of war or its reasons and the war is simply an attempt to define victory by counting the dead. I read number claimed by the Americans stating that the situation is improving. I laughed, because this claim was made once before and only that time, it was not in a desert of Iraq but in a sliver of a jungle known as Vietnam and as you stated, the cycle starts to repeat itself.

Ciao

``A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the
public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the
candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with
the result that a democracy always collapses over a loss of fiscal
responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the
world`s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These
nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty
to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to
complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from
dependency back again to bondage.``

Written by Alexander Fraser Tytler in ``The Decline and Fall of the Athenian
Republic`` 1776.

It is amusing to see desi-Canadians and desi-Americans lock horns and agrue each other in the same style as the Pak-Bharat dushmani club members are so fond of doing: My daddy`s is bigger than your daddy`s... Kinda more holy than the Pope or more royal than the king, whatever the phrase is...

No one the world over hates America as such. America is held in awe and idolized. It is the fascist policies of the US Federal government that the so-called ``America`s enemies`` are against. Hundreds of thousands of America-loving Americans also are against those same fascist forces that have hijacked the American Dream and have contaminated the America Paradise. But the many subserviant mentality of holier than thou, desi-American fascism apologists often fails to make that distinction, as do the fascists themselves, such as, Herr Reichman Rumsfeld, Herr Herman Ashcroft and Herr Adolf Juliani...

If and when there is another major terrorist incident, may the gods forbid it, and the personal lives of desi fascism-apologists living in the USSA start getting effected, their rhetoric may soften and they may see that you can be right for the right reasons and yet go totally wrong, or that you may be wrong and for the wrong reasons and yet end up being completely right. The single-minded sense of certainty and dogma in these arguments is way too much...

Appended here is a piece from a real America patriot who is not a desi opportunistic arm-chair warrior :

An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq


By STAN GOFF
(US Army Retired)

Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,

I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you--some more extreme than others--are changes I know very well. So I`m going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.

In 1970, I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, then based in northern Binh Dinh Province in what was then the Republic of Vietnam. When I went there, I had my head full of shit: shit from the news media, shit from movies, shit about what it supposedly mean to be a man, and shit from a lot of my know-nothing neighbors who would tell you plenty about Vietnam even though they`d never been there, or to war at all.

The essence of all this shit was that we had to ``stay the course in Vietnam,`` and that we were on some mission to save good Vietnamese from bad Vietnamese, and to keep the bad Vietnamese from hitting beachheads outside of Oakland. We stayed the course until 58,000 Americans were dead and lots more maimed for life, and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians were dead. Ex-military people and even many on active duty played a big part in finally bringing that crime to a halt.

When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States from Iraq, ...

Click here to read the full text.

...SR

``frankly, we don`t need lectures on defending Western civilization from those whose very defense has been a gift from us, the American taxpayers, since the beginning of the Second World War``

Gratitude doesnt appear to be a Canadian virtue.

re # 25 digit

Methinks, thou protesteth too much. Don`t take my word about Liberal incompetence on the Kazemi issue. Here is a statement from Rick Norland, head of the Northumberland Riding Canadian Alliance association:

What can Canadians Expect from the Liberals When Travelling Abroad?
Apparently, not much… especially if you find yourself wrongfully imprisoned or tortured. Some high-profile cases have made it plain that the Liberals` doctrine of ``soft power`` and ``constructive engagement`` when dealing with brutish foreign regimes is falling short when it comes to protecting our citizens. Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, was beaten to death in custody in Tehran, and ``constructive engagement`` has resulted in two charges laid temporarily, then dropped. We don`t know if anyone will ever be brought to justice for this murder.

Canadian William Sampson was tortured while imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for more than two years. His take on the help he received from Canadian officials? ``(They) were of neither use nor bloody ornament in the entire procedure through which I went,`` Sampson said. It`s time Liberals learned what it means to stand on guard for Canada. It`s time for them to fight for our citizens at home and abroad.<<

Speaking of ad hominems, you`re one who first questioned my integrity and then called me a hypocrite. I never get into personal insults unless egregiously provoked first.

``You are ready to `defend` Western civilization yet refuse to apply the values it claims to hold supreme.``

Our cities were turned into graveyards on 9/11/01; 3,000 of our brothers, sisters, and co-workers were killed in cold blood that day: frankly, we don`t need lectures on defending Western civilization from those whose very defense has been a gift from us, the American taxpayers, since the beginning of the Second World War.

re 23

Please correct ``export a little over 60 % of our exports to us`` to read ``export a little over 60 % of YOUR exports to us``

sigalph235 wrote:

``The nonchalant, appeasing attitude about the imprisonment, torture, and murder of Zahra Kazemi proves my point with more integrity than the Canadian government and its America-bashing apologists are capable of handling.``

What nonchalant and appeasing attitude are you talking about? In no way shape or form do I accept the death of Kazemi, although you seem to want to believe so for lack of any real argument. There is no room for ad homenim here...as I said it`s not at all difficult to understand the difference between the Kazemi and Arar case. One begins with the Iranians, the other with the Canadians/Americans.

We expect ``murderous`` regimes to turn a blind eye to ...well...murder. However those who claim the higher ground must be held accountable with respect to their own standards. Maher Arar`s deportation to Syria was not a blunder...it was an intentional move with a particular purpose in mind. He could have just as easily been jailed in the US or Canada. I call to your attention the 19 or so Pakistan+1 Indian youth who were (wrongly) held here recently on what turned out to be baseless suspicion.

You are ready to `defend` Western civilization yet refuse to apply the values it claims to hold supreme. There are words for such people...``hypocrite`` comes to mind...

re stuka 20
Yeash, that was a bit unfair on a personal level I suppose. But actually Mel Carnahan passed away about nine days before the election. As for name change, Missouri state law doesn`t allow any changes on the ballot after the 30th day before the election date(Mrs Carnahan was elected on a write-in vote). The general election dates are fixed by a co-reading of state law and federal law which means, inte alia, that general elections to the next Congress cannot be held any LATER than the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. So, our buddy John Ashcroft didn`t have much of a choice.

BTW, I think he is a brilliant man (you don`t go to Ivy League by being an idiot) and a reasonably good author. Compared to his predecessor as MO senator (Fr. John Danforth), however, Ashcroft is an intellectual and moral pygmie. Personally, I find his arrogance towards Congress and his political opponents to be quite disturbing. I sure hope that in the second term of `W`, Mr. Ashcroft is sent back to Missouri to live his happy retirement, protesting in front of abortion clinics and getting picked up under the Patriot Act.

re digit 21

The nonchalant, appeasing attitude about the imprisonment, torture, and murder of Zahra Kazemi proves my point with more integrity than the Canadian government and its America-bashing apologists are capable of handling.

You guys watch our TV shows, are defended by our NORAD, export a little over 60 % of our exports to us, play in our sports leagues..the list goes on. And then this kind of attitude, about which Shakespeare`s rigtly said

``Blow, blow though winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man`s ingratitude``

Arar`s removal to Syria was an exercise in discretion, perhaps a very poor judgement call but not entirely inconsistent with the fact that he was a DUAL citizen which meant that, at the discretion of the officer concerned, he could have sent back to Syria or Canada.

Sigalph wrote:

[You`re stretching it thin to cover up for latent America-bashing. When Canada doesn`t overtly do anything about the Arar case, it is `ineptitude in the face of American zealotry` and when Canada doesn`t do anything about a bunch of real zealots murdering Kazemi it is what? Moral uprightness?]

``America-bashing`` is a meaningless grievance. I have a particular qualm with the American government over this particular incident, and am by no means indulging in a general rant. So please...show an ounce of integrity.

The difference between Arar`s case and Kazemi`s case is not difficult to understand. Kazemi want to Iran on her own free will. She was murdered there. The Canadian government could not prevent that. As for follow-up, certainly the Canadians could have pushed their case a bit more aggressively, however in the end Canada has no real leverage over Iran to push them to do anything.

On the other hand, in Arar`s case, he was actively expelled to Syria (for some Syrian-style interrogation) by the Americans - America is a country with close ties to Canada from what I hear - when normal procedure would have him sent back to Canada. There is suspicion that Canadian law enforcement and government officials tacitly supported this action.

If I`m American-bashing, then I`m Canadian-bashing too. If criticizing a hypocritical American policy (namely handing people over to states they declare `rogue` nations for intelligence gathering) is American-bashing, then I actively encourage it.

[The interests of Canada and the US, and indeed for that matter Europe, lie together for as Europeans and even Saudis are finding out, appeasement never gets you rid of the
monster.]

*Sigh*. I have some rhetoric of my own for you.

Canada can look after her own interests without them being defined for her from abroad, thank you. The only ones we have been appeasing thus far are the Americans...we`ve had to put up with a lot of crap...flak for not going to Iraq (phew), an alleged border security problem to the extent that we’re considering costly measures to address this non-issue, harassment and torture of our citizens...


[Western civilization, and Canada is an integral part thereof, is under attack and the enemy is not the US. Mollifying murderers in Tehran, coddling Communists in Havana, and appeasing PLO thugs is not going to make Canada any safer, in the long run. ]

The murders in Tehran, the old toothless communist in Havana, and an equally old an toothless Arab in the occupied lands is not an immediate threat to Canada, or anyone else in the West. A reckless super power who is not shy of throwing her weight around - inventing threats to get her way no less - is a grave menace to the world...

Now that`s good old fashion America-bashing...or more properly neo-con-bashing. But of course, nowadays I suppose the only ``true`` American is a neo-con.

Sigalph:

(come on, the guy lost his election to a dead man!).

C`mon, that is below the belt. Ashcroft lost the election precisely because Mel Callahan had died the previous day in an air crash and his widow won the sympathy vote. It was to Ashcroft`s credit that he did not ask for a postponement or a name change on the ballot which was his due right. I had just moved out of the St Louis suburbs when the election happened and by all accounts it was going to be a close race.

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re digit
``And unlike the Kazemi case, this one involves Canadian ineptitude in the face of American zealotry.``

You`re stretching it thin to cover up for latent America-bashing. When Canada doesn`t overtly do anything about the Arar case, it is `ineptitude in the face of American zealotry` and when Canada doesn`t do anything about a bunch of real zealots murdering Kazemi it is what? Moral uprightness?

Don`t get me wrong, I have the highest regard for Canada and its gentle, welcoming culture; in fact my brother lives there. I agree that Canadians are rightly upset by the seeming ease with which certain Canadian ministers (specially the Atty Gen, TransportCanada, Sheila Copps etc) go out of there way to please the whims of our own loser Atty Gen(come on, the guy lost his election to a dead man!). That said, it is greatly troubling to me that so many amongst the Canadian intellentsia have a pathologocical need, like toddlers almost, to find something somewhere to blame America for. It is as if they have to do it just to sustain a raison d`etre for Canada (almost like many right-wing Pakistanis vis-a-vis India).

The interests of Canada and the US, and indeed for that matter Europe, lie together for as Europeans and even Saudis are finding out, appeasement never gets you rid of the monster. Western civilization, and Canada is an integral part thereof, is under attack and the enemy is not the US. Mollifying murderers in Tehran, coddling Communists in Havana, and appeasing PLO thugs is not going to make Canada any safer, in the long run.

Terrorism and Canada

It is the nature of foreign terrorists to take root in soft societies. Soft societies let alien terrorists operate relatively unhindered. These societies can become either bases for the launching of violent terrorist attacks on other societies, sources of new recruits into violent religious cults, or operating theaters for pseudo ideologists dedicated to defending terrorism.

With 9//11 seeing exodus of many terrorists, supporters of terrorism, and some innocent non terrorists from the US to Canada, Canada is headed down a dangerous path. Sooner or later it wil have to make the choice that the UK is having to make - decide between embracing terrorism - as the middle eastern countries have done - and realistic enlightenment that speaks to terrorists in the only language they understand - that of an uncompromising iron fist.

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I think Shahid makes a valid case for the censorship. A censorship is censorship whether it is imposed by a government institution or by a publically funded institution. It is not fair to judge censorship that is imposed in Western societies by the parameters that are applicable to third world countries. In Third World countries, it is usually the government that controls everything from sports to media and from business to God so the censorship is more visible and well defined. Whereas in Western societies, most of the institutions are publically or privately owned with minimum government interference, so the line between true censorship and the so called freedom of speech are blurry but censorship exists. When government imposes a censorship it does so because some vested interests of the interest- group(s) in the government are at stake. And when a public or private institution instills a censorship, it does so because the vested interests of interest-groups within the organization are at stake. Telling the truth and doing the right thing will always cost man. And that is the reason that Jihad is forever.

Romair#6

`
And if there are as numerous as you claim, then why don`t they just blow up things in Canada?
`

There are other nation (like Turkey..) to take care of before mosad works on Canada.

sigalph wrote

``And by the way, since Arar is mentioned, how come there is no mention of the Canadian journalist who was killed inside a prison in Iran? Bashing America makes juicier reading doesn`t it? ``

The death of Zahra Kazemi was big news here. It`s somewhat `stale` news since there is no change in the status of that story. The Arar story is relatively recent. And unlike the Kazemi case, this one involves Canadian ineptitude in the face of American zealotry. This one involves `our` government and law enforcement agencies, not those of a known corrupt regime. This has nothing to do with `America Bashing` - although America does deserve to be bashed in light of its actions.

oh yeah, no one is telling Canada how to run its own ship. But if it has a consequence on the US, it has a right to take its own steps to protect itself. What is so hard to understand about that? Maybe the Canadians will tighten up if the CN Tower is hit because the Sears Tower had become too hard a target.

All it takes is a couple of blasts to change your outlook on terror as the Saudis are fast discovering.

Digit:

You contradict yourself:

``You have no right to criticize Canada on this matter when America`s record is anything but stellar. ``

True, pre Sept 11 our record was anything but stellar. We should have tightened up after Y2K attempt. But we did not.

``Throw in general profiling, and mass detentions which in turn have produced little results, then we must conclude America has a really poor record, if anything.``

Excuse me?? How are these steps contradictary to thorough checks? So you are saying we had a poor record because we let people in who turned out to be terrorists and now we have a poor record coz we make an effort not to?

Regarding allegations, why would an intelligence service criticize or ``allege`` things about its own country?

Romair:

Here`s a report from Canadian Intelligence as reported by BBC BEFORE Sept 11. Read on...



The Canadian Intelligence Service says Islamic extremists, including supporters of the Saudi exile, Osama bin Laden, appear to be using Canada as a base for plotting against the United States.
The statement follows the capture last December of an Algerian-born man, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to cross into the United States from Canada while allegedly carrying bomb-making equipment.



Sunni Islamic extremism, exemplified by terrorist financier Osama bin Laden, has emerged as the pre-eminent international terrorist threat

CSIS report

In its annual report, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said the arrest of Mr Ressam and a number of associates was an indication that extremists had intensified their activities in North America.

The report says that, while state-sponsored terrorism continued to pose a significant threat, ``one of the prime motivators of terrorism today is Islamic religious extremism.``

``In the past few years, Sunni Islamic extremism, exemplified by terrorist financier Osama bin Laden, has emerged as the pre-eminent international terrorist threat.``

`The financier`

Last month, President Clinton accused Mr bin Laden of financing Mr Ressam - a charge denied by his lawyer.

The US has demanded that Afghanistan extradites Mr bin Laden to stand trial on charges of masterminding the August 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people.

CSIS said Canada`s open society and proximity to the United States meant the country was becoming an increasingly attractive base for foreign terrorists.

The Intelligence Service also said it was concerned that extremists were trying to manipulate immigrant communities in Canada.

``Despite warnings by the Canadian government that it is deemed unacceptable, certain governments consider it in their best interest to monitor the activities of political opponents living in Canada and coerce expatriate nationals,`` the report said.

`Friendly` threat

CSIS acknowledges that Canada is also threatened by its own allies.



Bomb explosions at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania cost many lives


``Foreign governments, including some of Canada`s allies and trading partners, direct their departments, state-owned corporations and intelligence services to engage in economic espionage against Canada,`` CSIS said.

The most sensitive areas of economy include aerospace, biotechnology, communications, information technology, nuclear energy, oil and gas, the report says.

CSIS is also concerned that other countries have targeted Canadian trade negotiations, military and technological development, and classified Nato exchanges.

Another serious problem is the smuggling of illegal immigrants - mainly from China - and the powerful financial resources enjoyed by crime groups from Eastern Europe and Asia.

``Several groups have an increasing presence in Canada and its economy through Canadian nationals and companies used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars,`` the CSIS reports says.

``There have been numerous incidents of Arab terrorists coming in from Canada.``

There have been numerous allegations of terrorists coming from Canada. There has, to my knowledge, only been one case with merit, and you have correctly identified it.


``This is a direct result of Canada`s lax policies in allowing foreigners without appropriate background checks.``

Excuse me? And what about all the 9-11 suspects? You have no right to criticize Canada on this matter when America`s record is anything but stellar. Throw in general profiling, and mass detentions which in turn have produced little results, then we must conclude America has a really poor record, if anything. Nothing to emulate, and certainly something we Canadians should keep in mind when Americans go on and on about our apparent lack of security at the borders.

shahid:

there is no clear and simple reason for the cancellation...some of the following play their part as well:

--outright racism
--influence peddling by the you-know-who groups
--buckling under the threats and innuendo (grants/aids)
--penetration in canadian security apparatus of foreign sympathizer
--ineffective lobbying by the minorities

agree with you these should be discussed and addressed

rgds,

t

stuka #2: ``There have been numerous incidents of Arab terrorists coming in from Canada.``

Could you highlight the, ``numerous`` cases.

Literally hundreds of thousands to millions of people cross between Canada and the USA every year. Multiply that by the number of years the border has been open and the number would run into tens of millions of people who have crossed.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of material has crossed the border, over the years.

Out of all of these people and material, you highlighted one case. Do the math. If it is a real problem, and Canada is, ``a den of anti American terrorsists due to its own ``liberal`` policies,`` as you claim, you should be able to rattle off at least ten cases, with no problem.

Could you list them for us, kindly.

Also, USA is busy blaming everyone and their grandmother for the terrorist acts against it. It tried to establish a Canadian relationship with the Sep 11 unsuccessfully. Not a single one of the terrorists came in from Canada. All of them entered the USA through the US immigration system. In fact, one of the pilots actually received an approved work visa, sent to his flying club, after he had died in the WTC attack!

The US policies are quite counter-productive. The people who enter the USA legally are generally well-wishers of the USA. All these restrictions against them, are just pissing them off, and the USA is losing its well-wishers. Outside foreign policy (where Canadians, like most peace-loving people are generally anti-USA), Canadians seem to really like and even admire the USA. However, all this anti-Canada stuff is pissing them off also.

The US had the world`s sympathy after Sep 11. I have never seen any nation lose such sympathy so quickly, due to its incorrect policies. This is primarily due to the attempts by the USA to pressurize other countries, to change their domestic policies, against the wishes of the other countries citizens. This is why the citizens of all countries, including India, are against sending their troops to help the USA.

There is absolutely no way to control terrorism on the supply side. It can only be controlled on the demand side. Each action USA takes, including Iraq, pressure on Canada etc. is just creating more individuals who are angry at the USA.

Interestingly the USA is unwilling to pressurize the one country it knows it needs to pressurize (Israel), to solve the USA`s terrorism problems.

Perhaps the Americans should ask themselves the following question: America has a huge immigrant population. It probably has the most terrorist sleeper cells in the world. Why is it that Americans are scared of terrorists crossing into America from Canada, yet Canadians are not scared of terrorists crossing into their country from the USA? Even though the USA`s immigration and security policies have proven to be weak.

And why is it that Canadians themselves don`t feel scared of the, ``numerous`` terrorists who, according to your claim, are sitting inside Canada at the moment?

And if there are as numerous as you claim, then why don`t they just blow up things in Canada? Why are they all bent upon entering the USA?

LoL @ wajahat

;-)

The author uses the word `censorship` rather permissively. Censorship is when a government or its agents stop you from expressing a thought, speech, cartoon, letters etc. It is an entire different ballgame when a non-government agency or a business decides not to underwrite what you express.Deliberately confusing the two seems to be one of the primary tools in the arsenal of the Blame America First crowd that is upset that many American publishing houses and institutions are not providing a forum for anti-American propaganda.

``Canada chose to legitimize the United Nations``. NO kidding. The same UN which presided over the genocide in Bosnia during much of which a Canadian general who led the UN `peacekeepers` busied himself being an apologist for Serbian atrocities. Now the same general is a spkesman for the chief Serbian apologist group in North America. Thank you, but we don`t need that kind of legitimization.

``...forged relationships with foreign countries irrespective of their political leanings`` With all due respect to Pierre Trudeau who I truly admire, the US is in a slightly different league than Canada. Just because the Liberal regime in Ottowa wanted to cosy up to Cuba, the PLO, Iraq, Iran doesn`t mean that US needs to do the same. Had we left it up to the Canadian foreign policy of all-gocts-are-equal, Communism would still be up and running.

And by the way, since Arar is mentioned, how come there is no mention of the Canadian journalist who was killed inside a prison in Iran? Bashing America makes juicier reading doesn`t it?

Oh and just to clarify matters to Wajahat and his ilk...

`` because they feel that your only motivation is being Anti-American.``

I do not see the author as Anti American at all. Nor do I see Europeans as being ``Anti American`` in the strict sense of the word. I do believe that their priorities and vision may be different from those of the United States. That is fine. They are welcome to define and prioritize their world view as they see fit and the US has the exact same right to do so for itself. There may be a tradeoff between coinciding priorities and relations with the US but that too boils down to prioritizing by the governments of the respective nations.

Well, you certainly have the right to ask your government for answers. But the United States has the right to act in self interest especially where national security is concerned. There have been numerous incidents of Arab terrorists coming in from Canada. The famous one was of the Algerian arrested on the border on the eve of the Millenium celebrations. The Algerian was in Canada and came to the US with the express purpose of blowing up the Space Needle on Dec 31, 1999. He was arrested by an alert customs agent and many kilograms of concealed explosives were discovered. This is a direct result of Canada`s lax policies in allowing foreigners without appropriate background checks.

The US and Canada are friendly nations and we wish the relations remain so. However, if Canada is to become a den of anti American terrorsists due to its own ``liberal`` policies then the Uunited States will have no choice but to implement defensive measures.

Shahid

You have hit upon a major issue across the liberal and secular world. People are going out of there way to defend the brash arrogance demonstrated by America and its murderous foriegn policy. Soon you will see some chowkies come out in there droves describing your article as ``Hot Air`` and ``Baseless`` because they feel that your only motivation is being Anti-American. It is a major problem with the bourgeosie as they wrap themselves up in the comfortable disposition of wealth and security of the greener pastures and conveiniently forget the injustices perpetrated in the name of Western Democracy.

Dont give up