IRAQ IS A DISASTER

[MayorMeanBeans]

No fuentes, your posting inaccurate news stories, i posted refutations of what you wrote, and i guess i expected a defense of sorts. thats all.

[lord_casek]

there was a rape video, too (abu ghraib_

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/18/1954193.htm

[pranksnbk]

[MayorMeanBeans]

"Muqtada al-Sadr has alleged that the entire point of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was to keep this decadent situation in place and to forestall the coming of the Mahdi by planting military bases around Iraq and the Persian Gulf. He says that the US Pentagon has an enormous file on the Mahdi.

 

In other words, the US and militant Sunni Arabs are felt by many Iraqi Shiites to be playing the role of Dajjal or "Anti-Christ", a figure whose purpose is to forestall the coming of the Imam Mahdi. Shiite tradition holds that the Mahdi will come together with the Return of Christ, and that the returned Christ will kill the Dajjal."

 

- i quoted http://www.juancole.com . this is a aspect of the conflict i never even contemplated. from a political standpoint, its pretty clever on al-sadr's part. he puts us in a corner in which we are completely out of our element, we have no way to "defend" ourself to accusations of being the Dajjal. Dawood, i know your sunni, and i know its real ignorant to ask you, but do you know anything about this?

 

furthermore, how can the us really go on record saying, "were not anti-christs, don't worry." this other-worldliness is something that we are bound to lose propaganda wise.

 

anyways, lets debate what the average iraqi says today, that "al qaida and americans are teaming up to hold the shiites down. since the us controls the security, and al qaida got past the security, THEREFORE, they have to be working together, right?" discuss.

[Juan Fuentes]

enormous file on the mahdi hahaaaa! yeah right,that fat scum wants to worsen the tentions between both sects.

like always taitors help the imperialism(their globalization) succeed in foreing lands,it happened in all over the globe.

 

 

 

abu ghraib...gitmo....and the ones we dont know! where thousands of innocent men are being tortured by the sad weak nerd devils that the powerful liders put there to do that.

[Dawood]

First of all, there were no Shi'ites during the time of the prophet Muhammad, therefore their ideology and beleifs are something new to islam. The Shi'ites have their own "Mahdi" that they beleive is the one the prophet Muhammad spoke about, but the evidences show that this is not that time and that there are more things that need to come before the Mahdi emerges.

The Shi'ites are like any other group there, fighting for power and leverage at this point.

I don't think that the American govt. beleives in the Mahdi, I do beleive that the American govt. beleives in conquering the islamic ideology so that it can continue in it's imperialist endeavors throughout that region and others.

 

Also, the Dajjal is one person, not a whole group or nation. THe Dajjal is like the equivalent to the anti-christ in christianity. We have to rememebr that Islam, Judaism Christianity all have common teachings because they were all originally Islam at one point before the men of those respective religions changed the teacings.

The american govt. may be helping pave the way for the dajjal, but many people misunderstand what the dajjal is.

[Dawood]

more on the dajjal

[Dawood]

Christian & Jewish Beliefs Regarding The Return Of The Messiah and Plots Against Masjid Al-Aqsa

[toke_wdc]

i think bush is just a spoiled little kid who has to get what he wants....it was actually kind of funny when everyone found out that the US troops couldnt find osama after all of bushes orders...but 9/11 was still fucked up so i dont blame him

[WORDISM45]

"O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are but friends of one another" [5:51].

 

 

so the quran teaches muslims not to be friends with people of other religions? That's not very nice.

[WORDISM45]

In summary, the Jews have got everything ready before even the temple is built. But they cannot start building until they get a sign from God as they believe. This sign is a red cow that should fulfill the description mentioned in their book. This cow would be slaughtered and burned and its ashes would be used to 'purify' the people of Israel, for you see none can enter the temple without being purified, and the Jews believe that they all are impure now until they are cleaned by the cow's remains! Well this cow they claim was born in 1997. "The ritual slaughter of the red cow will take place three years after its birth; the count down to the great return of the Jews to their original place of worship, and the glad tidings of he coming of the savior, the Messiah. The attempt to accomplish this return will lead to an unforgettable beginning of the third millennium." (The Observer, 9/7/97)

 

 

hahaha i think that source you posted has been proven wrong by grandfather time dawood

[Juan Fuentes]

every religion(not the belief system religion,but the group of people religion a.k.a its members) has weakenesses,and one of the greatest ones is the waiting for someone to save them.

 

there is no verse in quran that talks about this so called mahdi,and says that jesus died of a natural death,and was nothing but a distinguished human being.

 

this idea makes them stop believing in themselves and wait for miracles instead.

[Theo Huxtable.]

Anyone hear senator Lugar's comments? He said that Bush's "troop surge" strategy wasn't working, and that it's time to bring troops home. This comes as a surpise to many, as Lugar is probably the top Republican senator, a conservative, was one of the most vocal proponents of the Iraq war.

 

In defense of Bush -- Lugar's comments are premature. It's been a few months since Bush announced a "troop surge", yes; of about 30,000 additional troops. But the troops were sent in slowly, brigade by brigade -- and only about a week and a half ago has the troop surge been completed with every brigade arriving. And only within the last few days have we begun to see the troop surge start taking effect -- with the recent massive operations in and around Baghdad of cutting off al Qaida and removing their sancturaries. It will take even longer before we see a lasting effect (less violence and killings per day).

 

So yeah, Lugar's comments that the "surge" is working is premature, given that the first operation from the "surge" troops only took place a few days ago. I think the old man is senile and his logic and reasoning is beginning to falter.

[Dawood]

"O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are but friends of one another" [5:51].

 

 

so the quran teaches muslims not to be friends with people of other religions? That's not very nice.

 

 

the defenition of a freind in Islam is someone who reminds you of Allah when you forget and who encourages you to do good when you're doing wrong. A non muslim would never remind me of my duties to Allah but a muslim would.

I have non muslim aquaintances, but not one of them ever reminded me to pray at the fixed time so i don't really consider them "freinds" per se.

I don't hate them, I don't wish them harm, in the contrary, I wish the best for them and hope for them eveything good that I hope for myself, but do I conseder them my close freinds? No. The brothers who I pray with are my true freinds.

Is there anything wrong with that?

[MayorMeanBeans]

Dawood thanks for that but i have a couple more questions- how does shia and sunni thought regarding the dajjal differ? isn't the 12th imam and the mahdi the same in shia, while sunnis dont accept the 12th imam cuz of their schism?

 

Huxtable i saw that, and i agree with you its a little premature. Then again though, this current operation in Baquba was designed as such that they wouldnt offer the leaders an escape route and leave the troops to fight, as in Fallujah. Yet now the general is saying "they filtered out at the beginning phase of the surge. it wasnt such a good idea for the surge, they knew we were coming." Furthermore, he is also saying that Iraqis arent able to hold American gains.

 

i know its premature, but the first operation does not seem to be going to plan. no capture/kills of the top leadership, it seems like a classic guerilla attempt where its limited resistance but no staying power for the standing army, americans are taking some serious casualties (of course its relative, compared to iraqis i dont even know why we talk about american casualties).

 

ive read reports of sunnis being real nervous about accepting charity from the iraqi army. this means either that 1. there are iraqis who are either Mesapotamian Al Qaeda, or are collaborators. or 2, they dont believe that the Americans are going to stay, and that they don't trust the Iraqi Army. Neither scenario implies military victory.

[Dawood]

Sunnis and Shia are different. There are too many different sects among them. Some of them are extreme and some of them are moderate. Islam forbids sectarianism, although the prophet Muhammad said it would happen.

I said that to say that the views of the shia differ, some of them are not even considered muslims by the majority of sunnis because of their heretical beleifs but that is a small minority of them. Most Shia blindly follow their imams and don't have much knowledge of the Texts in islam. Actually, all of the sects are like that now.

 

As for the the extreme shia in Iraq like Al Sadr and his posse, they beleive in a Mahdi that is intrepeted in a whole different way that mainstream Islam and the MAJORITY of muslims believe.

[SADDAM HUSSEIN]

took the playa out the game.. what did you think was gonna happen?

[Theo Huxtable.]

the defenition of a freind in Islam is someone who reminds you of Allah when you forget and who encourages you to do good when you're doing wrong. A non muslim would never remind me of my duties to Allah but a muslim would.

I have non muslim aquaintances, but not one of them ever reminded me to pray at the fixed time so i don't really consider them "freinds" per se.

I don't hate them, I don't wish them harm, in the contrary, I wish the best for them and hope for them eveything good that I hope for myself, but do I conseder them my close freinds? No. The brothers who I pray with are my true freinds.

Is there anything wrong with that?

 

 

sad, because in christianity nothing says to discriminate against non-christians in ways that you can never consider them a "friend." buddhism also follows this similar principle.

 

christianity and buddhism -- treat everyone/anyone as a "friend"

 

islam -- only treat muslims as "friends"?

 

i'm having a harder and harder time of not believing that there is something inherently deviant with islam, and that it's just a group of fanatical terrorist knuckleheads giving a negative image to all of islam. but i'll stick with latter belief. no disrespect, i try to be open-minded... but a lot of facets of islam makes having such a stance difficult.

[WORDISM45]

I don't hate them, I don't wish them harm, in the contrary, I wish the best for them and hope for them eveything good that I hope for myself, but do I conseder them my close freinds? No. The brothers who I pray with are my true freinds.

Is there anything wrong with that?

apart from the spelling of the word friend I think it's pretty pathetic for a religion to tell you who your friends are and base it solely on their religion. For example you are allowed by the quran to be friends with mike tyson but not me, i feel left out...

[Theo Huxtable.]

i don't think muslims in the middle east consider "nation of islam" black muslims from the US to be real muslims.

 

but then again, many sunnis and shias don't consider each other's sects to be true islam. abu musab al-zarqawi considered shias to be just as "evil" as jews. so there ya go.

[aaspect]

a friend of mine was a combat medic in baghdad and was deployed for a little over 14 months. he has to go back in a few months, this time he is being sent to iran. he doesn't want to go back at all, but he is a solider, so obviously he will.

 

he is also in the national guard honor service, and he does honor services as his job while he is home. we live in sacramento, ca. northern california, so he is all voer northern california and nevada. he will be the first to tell you that what we are doing has shown no progress and has no plausible moral reasoning behind it, yet he is still going to go back to the front lines as a combat medic in a few months here. he never really talks about his time deployed, and this is pretty much the 1st time i have ever heard him say anything regarding the war. we were talking about his job as an honor guard and such and he replied with something of this nature:

 

"all i can tell you is this; it is a shitty time to be overseas and young. I don't know what it is man, but the last 3 months I have done more funeral services for soliders KIA that are 19-21 than ever before. It is sickening, 5 times a week I am at a funeral where the person being honored wouldn't be allowed to drink on US soil. The rate I have been seeing of young soldiers KIA is increasing substantially every day"

[Mercer]

My Mom lives down near DC and works as a civilian for the Army Field Hospitals.

She organizes the medical personell doctors and supplies for deployment abroad .

She told me they have to keep special ordering pediatric equipment for

all the children who are hurt/killed over there. They never had such a need for this

special equipment for kids before, even during veitnam.

 

So finally all my boys (2 of them in crew) get back in one piece and I'm feelin good.

My cousin was married two weeks ago and her new husband was deployed last week.

This shits got to stop.

[Mercer]

ok, since everyone knows Bush went to Iraq on false pretenses and that the troops are there basically Murdering people to keep the show on the road. The Question is WHY? Why do you think such a dispicable thing has been done, The whole world knows the deceit and lies of the Bush administration, They know everyone knows, So Why? what's the plan? I have my own Ideas and suspicions, but I want to hear yours.

 

My feeling on motive is this. Distraction from the problems here are easier than fixing them.

[lord_casek]

this is odd and funny

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22056684-5001028,00.html

[Stereotype V.0002]

Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer

 

KUTAR, KUTAR!

 

Hieeya!, Hieeya!, LA HUA HIEEYA!

 

http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/

[NoeWhan]

http://www.nfowars.net:443/stream1.pls

http://www.nfowars.net:443/stream1.pls

http://www.nfowars.net:443/stream1.pls

 

The Iraq war... and much much more

More than before, soon to hit your shore

Feed the starving to the poor, thats what 'they' are for

Blood and gore, you have seen it before

But, right outside your door?

[Theo Huxtable.]

interesting article i found...

 

Enemies Unseen

 

By MARK KUKIS

Mon Jul 30, 2:00 PM ET

 

 

 

The five sport-utility vehicles sat abandoned in the darkness. A faint beeping sound signaled that their doors were open. Some of the Iraqi police who arrived at the scene initially feared going near the cars, thinking the sound meant they were rigged to explode. Finally a few ventured closer. In the back of two of the vehicles were the four Americans. One of them was alive, though barely. Handcuffed, he had been shot in the back of the head, but he was breathing. The other soldiers were already dead. One had taken bullets in both legs and his right hand, and at some point the kidnappers had torn open his body armor and fired bullets into his chest and torso. Two others were handcuffed together, with one's right hand joined to the other's left. Two shots in the face and neck had killed one. Four bullets in the chest had killed the other.

 

 

None of the soldiers had identification. The killers had taken everything from the men's pockets before fleeing the scene. In his last moments, one of the soldiers, a young lieutenant, realized his body might be unidentifiable when he was discovered. In the dust caked on one of the vehicles he managed to write his last name, Fritz, a final act before dying.

 

 

To many Americans, the Jan. 20 murder of four U.S. soldiers on a deserted road in southern Iraq might sound similar to countless other tragedies in a bloody, brutal war. There was a firefight, which killed another American; a brazen abduction; then a frantic chase leading to a heartless end. And yet from the start, the deaths of the five Americans were also shrouded in mystery. The attack took place in Karbala, a Shi'ite holy city of roughly 1 million people that had been one of the safest in Iraq for U.S. troops. It happened in plain sight of Iraqi police the Americans had been assigned to train. The killers wore U.S.-style uniforms, suggesting a catastrophic lapse of security --or the possibility that the enemy operation had actually been an inside job.

 

 

The military has struggled to affix responsibility for the Karbala murders. U.S. commanders have accused the Quds Force, a paramilitary organization run by members of Iran's security establishment, of being behind the operation. On July 2 in Baghdad, the military revealed it was holding Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese national who was captured in Basra in March. He is a senior operative of Hizballah (the Lebanese Shi'ite militia supported by the Quds Force), and officials say he has admitted to involvement in the attack.

 

 

U.S. officials, who met their Iranian counterparts in Baghdad on July 24, have used the Karbala killings as evidence that Iran is sponsoring attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. But the full story of what happened that night may be even more tangled and disturbing, raising questions about the loyalties of some of the Iraqis whom U.S. troops are risking their lives to protect and support. An internal Army investigation into the attack reviewed by TIME, in addition to interviews with U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, suggest that the abduction and murders were carried out with the knowledge and complicity of Iraqi Shi'ite police who only hours earlier had been working alongside U.S. soldiers--and may have involved local officials loyal to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Karbala incident highlights the dilemmas facing the U.S. as it weighs whether and how to redeploy its troops from the front lines of the war. In some cases, the Iraqi security forces being trained and equipped by the U.S. retain ties to anti-American militia who could turn on U.S. troops as they depart. (On July 13, U.S. troops killed six Iraqi police in a raid targeting a rogue police commander.)

 

 

That's particularly unnerving given the military's push to embed more U.S. troops with Iraqi units. In Baghdad today, U.S. and Iraqi forces serve together in 65 combat outposts, up from 10 in February. But U.S. troops never went back to work with the Iraqis in Karbala, where the trust and friendships forged over many months ended in one night of betrayal and murder.

 

 

Most of the soldiers from Forward Operating Base Iskan, just south of Baghdad, liked the missions to Karbala. It was a chance "to get away from the flagpole" and all the bureaucracy of life back at the main base. In Karbala, roughly 30 men were on their own for a week or so at a time, staying at the city's governance center, where the police headquarters sat next to the governor's office. The two-hour drive from Iskandariyah could be nerve-racking as they eyed the edges of the route for roadside bombs. But once at the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center, life was simple and good in the way soldiers like.

 

 

Much of the unit had come together in the early months of 2006 at Fort Richardson, an Army base just outside Anchorage, Alaska. Jacob Fritz had graduated from West Point in 2005. Built like a football lineman, Fritz had grown up a Nebraskan farm boy in the town of Verdon, where his graduating class in high school had only 11 students. At West Point, Fritz earned the nickname "Jolly Jake" for his perpetual smile. The soldiers from Fort Richardson grew to like Fritz too. He had the kind of résumé you see among the young élite of the Army's officer corps. But early on, the enlisted men considered Fritz one of their own.

 

 

Johnathan Chism was a young Army specialist with a thick accent from his native Baton Rouge, La. The other guys called him "Gator," and Chism listed his ethnicity on MySpace as Redneck/ Southern. Johnathon Millican, 20, a private from Alabama, also spoke in a thick Southern accent and was the unit's resident comedian. Private Shawn Falter was from upstate New York and enlisted in the military in 2005, following three older brothers who served in the Army and the Marines. He liked country music. On the weekend before he deployed to Iraq in 2006, Falter was out with Staff Sergeant Billy Wallace and some others, singing karaoke. For his turn at the microphone, Falter sang the words to the Tracy Lawrence ballad If I Don't Make It Back.

 

 

In Karbala, Fritz led some of the missions on his own. At other times, Captain Brian Freeman took the lead. Freeman was, in essence, the chief U.S. liaison to Iraqi officials in Karbala, including Governor Akil Mahmood Khareem and police chief Mohammed Muhsin Zeidan al-Quraishy. At 31, Freeman was older than most of the other troops. He had graduated from West Point in 1999, served his obligatory five years of active duty and then settled into civilian life in Temecula, Calif., where he had a wife, a year-old son and another child on the way. Freeman had left active duty but remained a member of the Individual Ready Reserve Unit, which keeps a number of trained soldiers ready to call for deployment if needed.

 

 

By late 2006, Freeman's work in Karbala seemed to be going well. The U.S. planned to leave the center entirely in the hands of the Iraqis by the spring of 2007. But Freeman was uneasy about the job . He was an armor officer, more used to dealing with tanks and cannons than Iraqi politicians. Yet in Karbala he was a civil-affairs official, doing work he felt was more for a diplomat than a soldier. Shortly before Christmas 2006, Freeman took a short leave to visit his family in California, making his way to Baghdad for a helicopter flight on the first leg of the journey. At Landing Zone Washington, the main helipad inside the Green Zone, Freeman spotted Senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd, who were on a visit to Iraq. He introduced himself and began voicing some of his concerns. Freeman kept in touch with Dodd after they parted in Baghdad, reiterating his thoughts in an e-mail. "Senator, it's nuts over here," Freeman wrote. "Soldiers are being asked to do work we're not trained to do. I'm doing work that the State Department people are far more trained to do in fostering diplomacy. But they're not allowed to come off the bases because it's too dangerous here. It doesn't make any sense."

 

 

Freeman felt certain that the Iraqis he and his soldiers were supposed to be helping did not want them there. He and other troops suspected some of the police were members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of radical anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. That's not unusual, given that the largely Shi'ite personnel of Iraq's Ministry of Interior have long been seen as a de facto wing of the Mahdi Army. National police are suspected of taking part in the militia's sectarian killings in Baghdad. And in southern Iraq, where al-Sadr is powerful, infiltration of U.S.-trained Iraqi units is common. But even the wariest Americans have trouble believing that Iraqis who look them in the face each day could muster the audacity to try to kill them.

 

 

By early this year, Freeman was beginning to question the assignment. He was having trouble sleeping during his stays in Karbala. When he returned from leave in January, he asked his commanding officers if he could skip the Karbala mission heading out Jan. 14. He suggested doing some other long-term projects at the main base. Not doable, Freeman was told. The mission was heading out as scheduled, with him in command.

 

 

Many soldiers sensed a changed mood when they arrived at the Iraqi police headquarters in Karbala on Jan. 14. Some of the Iraqis the soldiers had been working with since the fall seemed unusually tense. One Iraqi police officer heckled some soldiers at the back gate in broken English, saying "U.S.A. bad, Iraq good" before throwing bread at them. Another aired an ominous warning. "Tomorrow," he said to soldiers standing guard outside, pounding a fist into his palm. "Tomorrow."

 

 

On Jan. 20, all except the guards posted at the back and front gates were at rest in the barracks area of the concrete headquarters building, where troops were scattered across two floors. At about 6 p.m., just as the sun was setting, a series of shots rang out, sounding much closer than the occasional gunfire heard in the area. Then two huge booms shook the ground from the inside. The soldiers scrambled into their armor and reached for their weapons. On the first floor of the main building, Wallace saw the door to the room he shared with Millican and three other soldiers open from the outside. Sergeant First Class Sean Bennett instinctively slammed it shut with his right shoulder. But the attacker in the hall still managed to cram the muzzle of an AK-47 into the doorjamb and let fly a stream of bullets. "The guy just opened up," says Wallace, who threw his left side against the door as the firing continued. "He started blasting all over the room the best he could."

 

 

Somewhere in the struggle, a grenade bounced into the room. Millican dived, catching bullets in his body as he went down and absorbed the explosion. He had been chatting online with his wife Shannon when the fighting broke out. A minute later, he was dead.

 

 

The explosions blew open an adjacent room where Freeman and Fritz worked. Then the door to Wallace's room flung open once more. Wallace looked up to see a man in the same desert-camouflage fatigues normally worn by Iraqi army soldiers; he was standing 2 ft. from him and taking aim with an AK-47. Wallace and Bennett threw their shoulders back into the door. The barrel caught in the crack a second time, and more bullets crashed around the side of the room. Seconds later, a massive explosion in the hall disintegrated the door around Wallace and Bennett, who was left badly wounded along with another soldier in the room, Jesse Hernandez. More blasts outside sent flames and smoke coursing through the darkening courtyard, where Falter and Chism had been standing guard. One of the humvees parked there was ablaze, and rounds from the turret gun began cooking off as the attackers rushed away.

 

 

As the troops tended to their wounded and waited for rescue helicopters to arrive, they realized Freeman, Fritz, Chism and Falter were missing. The attack had lasted just five minutes.

 

How did the attackers breach the base's security? A report from the military's investigation of the incident, a copy of which was obtained by TIME, says a convoy of eight sport-utility vehicles arrived at the outer gates of the complex shortly before the shooting started. The vehicles included a tan Suburban, a white Land Cruiser and a black Yukon. Inside the vehicles were at least eight men who wore American-style helmets and safety glasses, as well as some men wearing hoods in the way Iraqi interpreters working with U.S. forces sometimes do. According to the report, the Iraqi guards at the outer checkpoints put up no fight when the visitors ordered them, in English, to lay down their weapons and step aside.

 

Lieut. Nathan Diaz was in an upstairs room of the police headquarters with 18 other soldiers as the clash began. Like most of the other troops, Diaz initially thought the explosions were incoming mortars or rockets fired from insurgents outside the base. Diaz moved to the roof along with other soldiers and began shooting out lights around the courtyard so the troops would be harder to see if snipers were about. Diaz peered over the ledge into the courtyard just in time to see a humvee explode, sending up a shock wave that knocked him onto his back. Diaz and the other soldiers then decided to clear the roof, still thinking mortars were falling. Going downstairs, Diaz moved along the hall on the second floor where the police chief, al-Quraishy, and his two deputies, Ra'aid Shaker and Majed Hanoon, kept their offices. Soldiers called the chief's squad of personal bodyguards the "commandos." If there were any sign of trouble, the commandos would typically respond before the Iraqi police. But this time they barely moved as Diaz and other Americans rushed by. "I didn't really think much of it at the time, but very soon after, that became very strange," says Diaz, who came to believe that whoever was attacking the center had help from the inside.

 

After rescue helicopters had carried away Millican and three other wounded, Diaz confronted al-Quraishy, Shaker and Hanoon. How could this have happened? Al-Quraishy was supposed to be one of the best commanders the Iraqi security forces had. Nicknamed "the Wolf," he made a name for himself in Mosul in 2004 and '05, often appearing on an Iraqi true-crime television show called In the Hands of Justice, chasing down and personally interrogating militants. The Americans hoped al-Quraishy, who took over leadership of the Karbala police in the fall of 2006, could stand up to the Mahdi Army in southern Iraq. But Diaz and others believed that, at the least, some of al-Quraishy's police had let the Jan. 20 attackers into the main building without offering any resistance. During the fighting inside, none of the Iraqi police or the commandos did anything to help the Americans. "No one was shot," says Sergeant First Class Michael King, describing the Iraqi police immediately after the attack. "No one twisted an ankle. No one jammed a thumb. Nothing." Al-Quraishy was apologetic but offered no explanation. "You really can't tell with that guy," Diaz says. "Either he was sincere, or he's a great actor. It's really almost impossible to interpret."

 

The Karbala attack came days after the U.S.'s Jan. 11 arrest of five alleged Iranian operatives in Irbil, in northern Iraq. Military officials have theorized that the Karbala attack was orchestrated by Tehran in retaliation. But the U.S.'s initial probe of the incident found no evidence of direct Iranian involvement. Instead, the picture that emerged cast suspicion chiefly on senior Iraqi officials known to the Americans, as well as local thugs and associates of al-Sadr. The report on the investigation, which has been released only to the families of the soldiers who were killed, found that "it is too coincidental that the attackers, already argued as outside professionals, knew and raided only the two rooms where the Americans resided and were able to isolate the barracks-area soldiers and rooftop defenders." The report adds that many Iraqi police seemed to disappear moments before the assault and that the attackers seemed to know that the Americans would initially go to the rooftops during an attack, a drill U.S. troops had practiced in front of the senior Iraqi officers.

 

One source of dispute is whether the attackers were wearing U.S. uniforms, which Iraqi police claimed is the reason they didn't shoot. The man Wallace saw, however, was dressed in Iraqi army fatigues, which are sometimes worn by Iraqi police as well. "This all suggests that someone provided more than just a layout of the compound and knowledge of the Coalition Forces' battle drill," the report says. "It appears an inside assault force was pre-staged."

 

Since Jan. 20, the military has begun to identify militants thought to have taken part in the attack. On March 22, the U.S. military announced the arrest of Qais Khazali and his brother Laith, saying the two were apprehended in Basra and Hillah for allegedly playing a role in the Karbala attack. Khazali was a protégé of al-Sadr's in 2004 and '05, but his relationship to al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army is unclear these days. Investigators who questioned Khazali say he was working closely with the Iran-backed Quds Force before his capture and was leading a group of Shi'ite militants who trained in Iran. Khazali had traveled frequently to Iran for what appears to be weapons smuggling, U.S. military officials in Baghdad said. In May, U.S. forces killed Sheik Azhar al-Dulaimi after cornering him on a rooftop in Baghdad's Sadr City; investigators say they uncovered forensic evidence that shows al-Dulaimi was among the men who abandoned the vehicles used in the operation. On July 2 in Baghdad, the military revealed the capture of Ali Musa Daqduq, the purported Hizballah operative. "Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds Force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers," says Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

 

But is that the full story? The gunmen who arrived at the Karbala center were obviously skilled guerrillas, and it is certainly possible that some among them had come from as far away as Lebanon or Iran. But that does not explain whether any of the Iraqi officers at the center knew the killers were coming or whether any joined the attack or helped the kidnappers get away. The Americans interviewed by TIME say at least some Iraqi police at the center were involved, and the conclusions of the military investigation support that view. But neither U.S. nor Iraqi authorities have brought charges against any Iraqi police present at the time of the ambush.

 

Questions also remain about whether Iraqi politicians had prior knowledge of the attack. Lieut. Colonel Robert Balcavage, ground commander of U.S. forces operating in Karbala and surrounding areas, says Khareem, the governor of Karbala, knew many details very soon after the attack that night, which made Balcavage wonder if he knew of the operation beforehand. The Army investigation cites unconfirmed reports of calls from the governor's office to the outer checkpoints as the attackers were approaching, with orders to let them pass. In an interview, Khareem denied any wrongdoing. "To accuse me of involvement in this attack is to slight me," Khareem says. "Before anybody accuses me, they should have solid evidence. No charges have been brought against me, by any Iraqi or by the American side, so there's nothing to discuss."

 

Two investigators who worked on the case say there is enough evidence against the governor and others at the Karbala center to fill an indictment that would pass muster in a U.S. court. A female member of the Iraqi parliament from Babil province, Majada Discher, is suspected of involvement too. One of the vehicles used by the attackers was registered to her, and investigators say forensic evidence shows that one of her bodyguards was among the killers. In Karbala, Army investigators drew up two lists of suspects. The first list, comprising about 40 names, read like a Who's Who of local Shi'ite militants, mostly from the Mahdi Army. The second list has roughly 10 names of people the investigators dubbed "untouchables." These were people thought to be involved in the plot one way or another but considered too prominent to arrest or target, investigators said. Discher made the untouchables list, as did the governor, al-Quraishy, Shaker and Hanoon.

 

Though Balcavage feels that arrests are in order, the case has stalled. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who was a senior commander for southern Iraq at the time of the attack, says several Iraqi government officials remain under suspicion. "We haven't given up on this at all," he says. But Balcavage says political calculations can sometimes override the quest for justice. Removing a suspect police chief, for instance, could undo progress made in building up security forces and destabilize the local political leadership. "There's always second- and third-order effects for every action," Balcavage says. "The challenge is that you're working with a government you want to see succeed. But our values and the values of certain members of the government are not necessarily consistent. Our idea of good and their idea of good are not always the same."

 

As a result, working with Iraqi security forces and their leaders is becoming increasingly hazardous for many Americans in Iraq. Diaz, for example, sometimes still works with Hanoon, who was heard laughing into his cell phone the night of the Karbala attack. Hanoon is now the police chief of Iskandariyah. Diaz says his soldiers assume that Mahdi Army operatives are in their midst whenever they visit Hanoon, who works not far from the U.S. base at which pictures of the five Americans hang on a wall dedicated to the fallen.

 

When Iraqi authorities discovered the abandoned vehicles on the night of Jan. 20, Freeman was the soldier clinging to life. For a moment before the Americans finally arrived, the Iraqis thought Freeman might still have a chance. They could have waited for U.S. soldiers to come, but Freeman needed care immediately. So the Iraqis acted on their own. They pulled Freeman from the back of the vehicle and loaded him into an ambulance. An Iraqi army soldier administered CPR until a medic could give him oxygen as they rushed to the nearest hospital in Hillah. But Freeman's wound was too severe, and he died along the way.

 

"I would like to tell the family that we tried to help him so that he would live," the Iraqi soldier later told U.S. investigators who took a statement from him. "We are very sorry that he died. We treated him as if he was our own."

 

Copyright © 2007 Time Inc.

 

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

[Theo Huxtable.]

wow look what hypocrite dick cheney said in 1994 about thinking a US invasion of Iraq would be a mistake and would lead to quagmire:

 

 

but what's baffling is that he is aware of all this, yet was probably the biggest proponent for invading iraq.

[El Mamerro]

Bump, with some happy stuff for a change (OMG IS PROPAGANDA LOLZ):

 

 

 

Fulfilling part of a promise: a new home

Mar 31, 2008 - 04:05:04 CDT

 

 

WEST FARGO (AP) - A woman and her seven children have a new house as part of a promise made to her husband, who was killed in Iraq after he helped American soldiers.

 

Two North Dakota National Guard soldiers stood Saturday in the newly built Habitat for Humanity house beside Fatima Ali, the Iraqi woman they call "Mrs. M." Each put a hand to the wall in a blessing.

 

Mrs. M's husband, Majid Ali, had invited the North Dakota soldiers into his home in north-central Iraq and provided them with lifesaving information about roadside explosives planted by Iraqi insurgents.

 

"This family here saved American lives," Sgt. 1st Class Shayne Beckert said, choking up Saturday as he looked at the children. "If it hadn't been for their father, there would have been more parents in North Dakota with hurt in their hearts."

 

Members of the North Dakota National Guard's 141st Engineer Combat Battalion were on hand three years ago to greet Mrs. M and her children when they arrived in Fargo.

 

"My children have lost their father," she said. "But I think they will find they have many fathers here."

 

The North Dakota soldiers had arrived in Iraq in early 2004. Capt. Grant Wilz's platoon of B Company was deployed near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown and a hotspot in the growing insurgency. Its primary assignment was to clear roads of roadside bombs.

 

The bombs killed two members of B Company: Sgt. Lance Koenig, 33, Fargo, and Specialist Phil Brown, 21, Jamestown. In all, the 141st lost four men in Iraq.

 

Wilz's platoon was on patrol one day when it happened upon an Iraqi man whose truck had broken down. The Americans searched Majid Ali, grilled him about a weapon they found, and soon were sitting down to supper in his house.

 

"He was one of the few people you meet in your life you immediately like," Beckert said. "When we showed up, he'd fly out of the house and give us big hugs."

 

The house was near the soldier's regular patrol route, Wilz said. "The whole patrol would stop in and visit. We'd set up security, provide them with some food and water. Some of the soldiers played soccer with the kids," he said.

 

When their new friend began providing them with intelligence about where insurgents were placing bombs, they called him Mr. M in reports and conversation, hoping to protect him. But he was pulled from his truck and shot 30 times in the arms, legs, chest and head as his 11-year-old son was made to watch.

 

The boy said he was told, "This is what happens when you help the Americans."

 

The soldiers had told Majid Ali to be careful. They worried about him. He smiled and dismissed the warnings, they said, and asked only one thing: "If something happens to me, take care of my family."

 

Lutheran Social Services sponsored the family and, with other agencies, helped with housing, education and employment. Materials and labor for the house were donated. The soldiers organized fundraisers in Fargo and Bismarck, where Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., and Gov. John Hoeven grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and helped to raise $100,000.

 

Habitat for Humanity officials said they bent or broke some rules to build the family's house, a twin home with Mrs. M's brother, Ali Alkaabi, who had come to the U.S. years earlier, and his family occupying the other half.

 

The family has adjusted to snow and cold. Mrs. M is working, cleaning houses.

 

"The whole family is learning English, and the kids are doing well in school," Pomeroy said Saturday.

 

"Today is a triumph of spirit," Hoeven said.

 

One of the children, Nour, 15, talked about being on the track team at school, enjoying math and science and planning to become a doctor.

 

"It's nice here," she said. "It's safe."

 

Zuher, 13, showed off his room, painted a bright green he picked to match the green uniforms of the Iraqi national soccer team. He also has a new University of North Dakota hockey jersey.

 

"When I go to college," he said, "I'll play for the Sioux."

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2008/03/31/news/state/152281.txt

[Bonjour Quebec]

why did the US even both wasting money and more importantly lives