Iraq
Calm before the storm in Baghdad
The threat is clear. ‘Do not go out of your homes. Keep your families off the streets,’ the leaflet says. ‘The Combined Mujahideen Brigades are coming to Baghdad.’
Mooj were NOT in Iraq while Saddam was in power, because he wanted no part of them. Many of them are battle-hardened troops, originally trained by the CIA to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Some Mooj were in the field there for 5-10 years straight, which means they have more combat experience than many in the US military. These are not lightweights.
British troops ‘in Iraq for ten years’
British troops may have to stay in Iraq for up to ten years to ensure security.
Assuming Tony Blair lasts in power that long…
Eleven US soldiers die as revolt spreads to Syrian border. This is quite significant. US forces were ambushed in an area thought to be free from insurgents. Perhaps the question should be, what areas of Iraq is the rebellion not in?
Follow me, said the president. And, tragically, we did, says the NY Times
With his misbegotten war in Iraq, his failure to throw everything we had at Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and his fantasy of using military might as a magic wand to “change the world,” President Bush has ushered the American people into a bloody and mind-bending theater of the absurd.
I’m glad the NY Times is finally coming around. But where were they, the Washington Post, and the rest of the “responsible media” as war fever was building? Why, they were cheer-leading the way for Dubya.
If there were few less liberal hawks running around imagining they were “more serious” than the anti-war folks, providing the mushy middle with reason to jump on the war train, it just might have been. The fact that a lot of center-left types, or what qualifies as center-left in our media anyway, took the pro-war position provided the pro-war media an easy excuse to completely marginalize all anti-war opinion.
Even now many of these same people still cling to the conceit that because they were previously for the war they now have a greater degree of credibility on this issue. Well, sorry, you were wrong. There were people who were right. Let them talk for a change.
That would be ANSWER, United for Justice and Peace, Code Pink, and the many other organizations who mobilized and organized to stop the war, long before it started.
ANSWER was formed shortly after 9/11 because some far-sighted people assumed the US would soon be invading countries so it was time to start mobilizing. They were quite correct, the US invaded two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. What no one, including ANSWER, predicted was how, pardon me, inept the US government would be and how ferocious the Iraq resistance would be.
It’s like the Vietnam War at high speed, things are falling apart much faster for the US than anyone would have thought possible.
And none of it had to happen – as the corpses pile up.