Forum - How I see the war in Iraq

You see, back when blacks fought against segregation, whites had no idea how blacks were being discriminated, largely because they chose to ignore the obvious to save their own egos, and this was a sub-conscious effort you see. As far as whites knew, blacks had everything they had, schools, houses, etc (although they were of poorer quality).... But at some level whites knew they had it better than blacks, they would cringe at the thought of how they'd live had they been born black (but they probably wouldn't admit it, because denial is a strong ego-defense mechanism in the sub-conscious mind).
So when blacks rejected being segregated, whites became defensive, they were, sub-consciously, defending their dominance. And when tensions like this rise, their hatred will often bleed over from the sub-conscious to their conscious. Had blacks sat back and accepted their unequal lot, whites would not have been as violent to blacks, but, the blacks would not have became equals. Do you see what I am saying?
There are a lot of parallels in ableism and racism, largely because it's the same mentality, it was taught from the same source (which was pushed sub-consciously into society-- eugenics).

nevermind lets just forget about it and move on, I'm not trying to really make this into a big conversation about an off topic issue on the OP's thread.

How do you think, guys, will Iran also be attacked by the US or not?

It seems very interesting to me for there is too much pro's and contras!

I don't want Iran to be attacked. It is quite more boggy hornets' nest than Iraq or Yugoslavia!

It IS! Like Afghanistan but thrice larger and densely populated. And also has oil...

Iran was attacked by the Isralie Air Force when they first attempted to build a nuclear power plant. No other country would help them, at least openly.
It has been proven that Iran is a training ground for the "Iraqi Insurgernts", meaning that soldiers from many Moslem countries go there to receive military traing and equiptment. Where do you think most suidied bommers are trained?
Any way Iran will not be attacked, at least not by the US. They are partners with China and that would set off too many political consequenses. They are also receving aid from Russia and with Putin's new military push it could start a New Cold War, if one hasn't already been started.

For those who only think the war is in Iraq, read this:

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US to send 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jan 10, 11:55 AM ET



The Pentagon is preparing to send at least 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan in April to bolster efforts to hold off another expected Taliban offensive in the spring, military officials.

The move Wednesday represents a shift in Pentagon thinking that has been slowly developing after months of repeated insistence that the U.S. was not inclined to fill the need for as many as 7,500 more troops that commanders have asked for there. Instead, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pressed NATO allies to contribute the extra forces.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that a proposal will go before Gates on Friday that would send a ground and air Marine contingent as well as a Marine battalion — together totaling more than 3,000 forces — to southern Afghanistan for a "one-time, seven-month deployment."

Gates, he said, will want to review the request, and is not likely to make a final decision on Friday.

"He will take it and consider it thoroughly before approving it," said Morrell. "I just want to get people away from the idea that this is going to be imminently approved by the secretary."

He said Gates "has some more thinking to do on this matter because it's a serious allocation of forces."

Morrell added that Gates' thinking on the issue has "progressed a bit" over time as it became clear that it was politically untenable for many of the NATO nations to contribute more combat troops to the fight.

"The commanders need more forces there. Our allies are not in the position to provide them. So we are now looking at perhaps carrying a bit of that additional load," the spokesman said.

Morrell said the move, first reported Wednesday by ABC News, was aimed at beating back "another Taliban offensive" that is expected this spring — as has occurred in previous years.

When Gates was in Afghanistan last month, commanders made it clear they needed the additional forces.

Last year was the most violent since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The number of attacks has surged, including roadside bombings and suicide assaults.

Currently there are about 27,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including 14,000 with the NATO-led coalition. The other 13,000 U.S. troops are training the Afghan forces and hunting al-Qaida terrorists.

Morrell said that while the Marine ground and air contingent would be put in place to prevent a spring Taliban offensive, the Marine battalion likely would be used to train Afghan forces.

The shift in U.S. thinking on sending more combat forces to Afghanistan has appeared inevitable in recent weeks, based on the political realities in many of the NATO nations.

In meeting after meeting during his Afghanistan visit in early December, Gates heard pleas from both Afghan and U.S. military leaders for up to 7,500 more forces, with about half needed for training.

About a week later, Gates was asked by a reporter after a NATO meeting in Scotland whether the Bush administration was considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, in the event that the shortfalls are not bridged by NATO allies. Gates replied, "Not in the short term."

But by Dec. 21, Gates acknowledged during a press briefing that the Pentagon would "be looking at the requirement ourselves."

Bush administration officials pressed NATO allies for months to fill gaps in troops levels in Afghanistan, but many allied governments face public opposition to deeper involvement there.

Gates said at the Scotland meeting that the administration had decided to tone down its appeals to allies, taking into account "political realities" faced by some European governments whose citizens may see less reason to intervene in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration has launched a wide-ranging review of its policy in Afghanistan to ensure that gains made since the radical Islamist Taliban regime was ousted in 2001 are not lost and to bolster Afghan President Hamid Karzai's nascent government.

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AP Military Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

The war spreads.

Bhutto death rocks Afghan hopes for anti-militant alliance: officials by Bronwen Roberts
Sat Dec 29, 3:30 AM ET



Benazir Bhutto's death has rocked the Afghan government, which had seen in her the chance of a closer alliance with Pakistan against extremism despite her links to the Taliban's creation, officials said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai met Bhutto for talks during a state visit to Pakistan just hours before she was killed Thursday in a shooting and suicide bombing.

The president later described Bhutto's death as a big loss and blamed those who were afraid of her strength and vision, while Pakistan's government pointed the finger at Al-Qaeda.

"We were shocked," said Karzai's chief spokesman Homayun Hamidzada.

Bhutto had understood the difficulties neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan faced amid a wave of unrest in both countries, including a spike in suicide attacks, Hamidzada said.

"She said if she was re-elected she would work closely with the international community and the government of Afghanistan to address their common threats of terrorism and extremism," he said.

Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party was the frontrunner for elections due in the country in January 8.

"She had good relations with us," said foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen, whereas observers have described Karzai's relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as improving but testy.

"It is very disappointing for us to see her absence from the Pakistan political scene," said Davood Moradian, a foreign ministry adviser.

Kabul had been looking forward to Bhutto giving voice to the moderate Muslims of Pakistan, he said.

"But we are hoping that the way she was murdered by terrorists will provide momentum for the international community to see a long-term solution to the problems."

The Afghan government had seen in Bhutto the "one major democratic force" in Pakistan, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.

"It was not just the government of Afghanistan that was putting a lot of hope on her, it was the whole world," he said.

She was committed to fighting extremists and to controlling the fundamentalist religious schools that spawn militants, he said, adding she also wanted to raise awareness of the consequences of extremism.

"Of course she had a troubled past, but looking ahead -- she was one of the few credible Pakistan alternatives."

The Taliban took up arms in chaotic southern Afghanistan and swept to power with funding and support from Pakistan's military during Bhutto's second term as premier, between 1993 and 1996.

Author Steve Coll says in his book on Afghanistan -- Ghost Wars -- that Bhutto had admitted in a 2002 interview to supporting the movement, which Pakistan initially used to protect a trade route.

"I became slowly, slowly sucked into it," Bhutto is quoted as saying. "It started out with a little fuel, then it became machinery."

The support grew and Pakistan went on to become one of only three countries that supported the Islamic regime as it gave sanctuary to Al-Qaeda.

A US-led invasion drove out the Taliban government because it refused to hand over Al-Qaeda leaders for the 9/11 attacks, and militant leaders are believed to have fled to Pakistan.

Analyst Waheed Mujda said Bhutto's death would likely trigger more unrest in Pakistan.

He said that "obviously Pakistan would try to shift the violence from their country to Afghanistan."

"We've seen in the past mullahs telling young fighters to go to Afghanistan for jihad (holy war) and they've done so," he said.

Hamidullah Tarzi, a former government minister, said the killing of Bhutto may be a filip for those responsible and for militants in frontier areas that have been semi-autonomous for centuries.

But an "aggressive policy" towards these areas could only backfire, he said, adding Bhutto's suggestion that she would allow a US military strike on Pakistan to eliminate Osama bin Laden may have been her "undoing."

I worry what to do with Iraq, how to close this damned affair! I try even not to think about attacking Iran. We cannot be stuck there all the time!

The war continues to expand.

Attack on US vehicle in Beirut kills 3 By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 30 minutes ago



An explosion targeted a U.S. Embassy vehicle Tuesday in northern Beirut, killing at least three Lebanese and injuring an American bystander and a local embassy employee, U.S. and Lebanese officials said.

The blast, which damaged the armored SUV and several other vehicles, took place just ahead of a farewell reception for the American ambassador at a hotel in central Beirut.

No Americans were in the car, which was carrying two Lebanese employees of the embassy, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

There were conflicting accounts of the death toll, with the State Department, from information provided by the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, saying four people had been killed and Lebanese authorities saying that only three had died.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the bombing a "terrorist attack."

"The United States will, of course, not be deterred in its efforts to help the Lebanese people, to help the democratic forces in Lebanon, to help Lebanon resist force and interference in their affairs," she told reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The bombing — which came as President Bush and Rice toured the Mideast — was the first attack on U.S. diplomatic interests in Lebanon since the 1980s, when the country saw some of the deadliest terror attacks against Americans in U.S. history.

A 1983 truck bombing killed 241 American service members at the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut airport. The same year, a suicide bomber hit the U.S. Embassy there, killing at least 17 Americans, including top CIA officials.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora called an emergency Cabinet meeting after Tuesday's blast. The country has seen a series of bombings in the past three years targeting anti-Syrian figures, journalists and most recently, a top Lebanese army general.

The powerful blast could be heard across the Lebanese capital, sending gray smoke billowing over a Mediterranean coastal highway in the predominantly Christian Dora-Karantina neighborhood.

Two Lebanese employees of the embassy were in the vehicle, and the driver was lightly injured, McCormack said. He said four Beirut residents who do not work for the embassy were killed.

But Lebanese Red Cross Iyad al-Munzer said three people were killed. The figure was corroborated by two senior Lebanese security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military rules.

Five others were wounded, the officials said.

Among them was an American citizen, Minnesota native Mathew Clason, who was at the nearby National Evangelical Church near where the explosion took place.

"The windows blew in and I fell down — I was knocked out. I don't know exactly what happened," Clason, who had been in Lebanon for two weeks, told AP Television News while sitting in the emergency room corridor of Jeitawi Hospital in Beirut. His head and right leg were bandaged.

The U.S. Embassy immediately canceled a banquet for departing Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, scheduled for Tuesday evening at Beirut's seaside Phoenicia Hotel.

A senior Lebanese police official said the blast was caused by a bomb placed between two garbage containers on the side of a narrow road adjacent to the main highway, which detonated as the car passed.

McCormack could not offer specifics about the blast or whether the vehicle had been targeted, but said it was hit directly "by the explosion itself."

He said agents from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security would work with Lebanese authorities to investigate the blast and that the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was reviewing security.

"We are going to take a look at what implications, if any, there are for our security posture in Beirut," McCormack said.

Beirut has had a long history of attacks against Americans since the turmoil of the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.

In 1976, the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Francis E. Meloy Jr., and an aide, Robert O. Waring, were kidnapped and shot to death in Beirut. In 1984, William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped and murdered by the Islamic Jihad group.

The U.S. withdrew all diplomats from Beirut in September 1989 and did not reopen its embassy until 1991.

Before Tuesday's bombing, the last American killed in Lebanon was a missionary gunned down in 2002 at a Christian center where she worked as a nurse. At the time, Bonnie Penner, 31, was the first U.S. citizen killed in the country in more than a decade.

___

Associated Press Writer Scheherezade Faramarzi contributed to this report.

The cost of War to the U.S. troops.

New generation of homeless vets emerge By ERIN McCLAM, AP National Writer
Sat Jan 19, 11:52 PM ET



Peter Mohan traces the path from the Iraqi battlefield to this lifeless conference room, where he sits in a kilt and a Camp Kill Yourself T-shirt and calmly describes how he became a sad cliche: a homeless veteran.

There was a happy homecoming, but then an accident — car crash, broken collarbone. And then a move east, close to his wife's new job but away from his best friends.

And then self-destruction: He would gun his motorcycle to 100 mph and try to stand on the seat. He would wait for his wife to leave in the morning, draw the blinds and open up whatever bottle of booze was closest.

He would pull out his gun, a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol. He would lovingly clean it, or just look at it and put it away. Sometimes place it in his mouth.

"I don't know what to do anymore," his wife, Anna, told him one day. "You can't be here anymore."

Peter Mohan never did find a steady job after he left Iraq. He lost his wife — a judge granted their divorce this fall — and he lost his friends and he lost his home, and now he is here, in a shelter.

He is 28 years old. "People come back from war different," he offers by way of a summary.

This is not a new story in America: A young veteran back from war whose struggle to rejoin society has failed, at least for the moment, fighting demons and left homeless.

But it is happening to a new generation. As the war in Afghanistan plods on in its seventh year, and the war in Iraq in its fifth, a new cadre of homeless veterans is taking shape.

And with it come the questions: How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars?

What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?

___

For as long as the United States has sent its young men — and later its young women — off to war, it has watched as a segment of them come home and lose the battle with their own memories, their own scars, and wind up without homes.

The Civil War produced thousands of wandering veterans. Frequently addicted to morphine, they were known as "tramps," searching for jobs and, in many cases, literally still tending their wounds.

More than a decade after the end of World War I, the "Bonus Army" descended on Washington — demanding immediate payment on benefits that had been promised to them, but payable years later — and were routed by the U.S. military.

And, most publicly and perhaps most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens.

Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers.

For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 400 of them have taken part in VA programs designed to target homelessness.

The 1,500 are a small, young segment of an estimated 336,000 veterans in the United States who were homeless at some point in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Still, advocates for homeless veterans use words like "surge" and "onslaught" and even "tsunami" to describe what could happen in the coming years, as both wars continue and thousands of veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress.

People who have studied postwar trauma say there is always a lengthy gap between coming home — the time of parades and backslaps and "The Boys Are Back in Town" on the local FM station — and the moments of utter darkness that leave some of them homeless.

In that time, usually a period of years, some veterans focus on the horrors they saw on the battlefield, or the friends they lost, or why on earth they themselves deserved to come home at all. They self-medicate, develop addictions, spiral down.

How — or perhaps the better question is why — is this happening again?

"I really wish I could answer that question," says Anthony Belcher, an outreach supervisor at New Directions, which conducts monthly sweeps of Skid Row in Los Angeles, identifying homeless veterans and trying to help them get over addictions.

"It's the same question I've been asking myself and everyone around me. I'm like, wait, wait, hold it, we did this before. I don't know how our society can allow this to happen again."

___

Mental illness, financial troubles and difficulty in finding affordable housing are generally accepted as the three primary causes of homelessness among veterans, and in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, the first has raised particular concern.

Iraq veterans are less likely to have substance abuse problems but more likely to suffer mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress, according to the Veterans Administration. And that stress by itself can trigger substance abuse.

Some advocates say there are also some factors particular to the Iraq war, like multiple deployments and the proliferation of improvised explosive devices, that could be pulling an early trigger on stress disorders that can lead to homelessness.

While many Vietnam veterans began showing manifestations of stress disorders roughly 10 years after returning from the front, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have shown the signs much earlier.

That could also be because stress disorders are much better understood now than they were a generation ago, advocates say.

"There's something about going back, and a third and a fourth time, that really aggravates that level of stress," said Michael Blecker, executive director of Swords to Plowshares," a San Francisco homeless-vet outreach program.

"And being in a situation where you have these IEDs, everywhere's a combat zone. There's no really safe zone there. I think that all is just a stew for post-traumatic stress disorder."

Others point to something more difficult to define, something about American culture that — while celebrating and honoring troops in a very real way upon their homecoming — ultimately forgets them.

This is not necessarily due to deliberate negligence. Perhaps because of the lingering memory of Vietnam, when troops returned from an unpopular war to face open hostility, many Americans have taken care to express support for the troops even as they solidly disapprove of the war in Iraq.

But it remains easy for veterans home from Iraq for several years, and teetering on the edge of losing a job or home, to slip into the shadows. And as their troubles mount, they often feel increasingly alienated from friends and family members.

"War changes people," says John Driscoll, vice president for operations and programs at the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "Your trust in people is strained. You've been separated from loved ones and friends. The camaraderie between troops is very extreme, and now you feel vulnerable."

The VA spends about $265 million annually on programs targeting homeless veterans. And as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans face problems, the VA will not simply "wait for 10 years until they show up," Pete Dougherty, the VA's director of homeless programs, said when the new figures were released.

"We're out there now trying to get everybody we can to get those kinds of services today, so we avoid this kind of problem in the future," he said.

___

These are all problems defined in broad strokes, but they cascade in very real and acute ways in the lives of individual veterans.

Take Mike Lally. He thinks back now to the long stretches in the stifling Iraq heat, nothing to do but play Spades and count flies, and about the day insurgents killed the friendly shop owner who sold his battalion Pringles and candy bars.

He thinks about crouching in the back of a Humvee watching bullets crash into fuel tanks during his first firefight, and about waiting back at base for the vodka his mother sent him, dyed blue and concealed in bottles of Scope mouthwash.

It was a little maddening, he supposes, every piece of it, but Lally is fairly sure that what finally cracked him was the bodies. Unloading the dead from ambulances and loading them onto helicopters. That was his job.

"I guess I loaded at least 20," he says. "Always a couple at a time. And you knew who it was. You always knew who it was."

It was in 2004, when he came back from his second tour in Iraq with the Marine Corps, that his own bumpy ride down began.

He would wake up at night, sweating and screaming, and during the days he imagined people in the shadows — a state the professionals call hypervigilence and Mike Lally calls "being on high alert, all the time."

His father-in-law tossed him a job installing vinyl siding, but the stress overcame him, and Lally began to drink. A little rum in his morning coffee at first, and before he knew it he was drunk on the job, and then had no job at all.

And now Mike Lally, still only 26 years old, is here, booted out of his house by his wife, padding around in an old T-shirt and sweats at a Leeds shelter called Soldier On, trying to get sober and perhaps, on a day he can envision but not yet grasp, get his home and family and life back.

"I was trying to live every day in a fog," he says, reflecting between spits of tobacco juice. "I'd think I was back in there, see people popping out of windows. Any loud noise would set me off. It still does."

___

Soldier On is staffed entirely by homeless veterans. A handful who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually six or seven at a time, mix with dozens from Vietnam. Its president, Jack Downing, has spent nearly four decades working with addicts, the homeless and the mentally ill.

Next spring, he plans to open a limited-equity cooperative in the western Massachusetts city of Pittsfield. Formerly homeless veterans will live there, with half their rents going into individual deposit accounts.

Downing is convinced that ushering homeless veterans back into homeownership is the best way out of the pattern of homelessness that has repeated itself in an endless loop, war after war.

"It's a disgrace," Downing says. "You have served your country, you get damaged, and you come back and we don't take care of you. And we make you prove that you need our services."

"And how do you prove it?" he continues, voice rising in anger. "You prove it by regularly failing until you end up in a system where you're identified as a person in crisis. That has shocked me."

Even as the nation gains a much better understanding of the types of post-traumatic stress disorders suffered by so many thousands of veterans — even as it learns the lessons of Vietnam and tries to learn the lessons of Iraq — it is probably impossible to foretell a day when young American men and women come home from wars unscarred.

At least as long as there are wars.

But Driscoll, at least, sees an opportunity to do much better.

He notes that the VA now has more than 200 veteran adjustment centers to help ease the transition back into society, and the existence of more than 900 VA-connected community clinics nationwide.

"We're hopeful that five years down the road, you're not going to see the same problems you saw after the Vietnam War," he says. "If we as a nation do the right thing by these guys."

Yes, but the powers that be are greater than any one nation, in fact they control all the nations through lobbying and such. So I do think they may send European troops to Iran possibly.... I mean it's all working towards the same goal, a one world dictatorship.

er, wrong quote on last post, I meant to quote where Paul stated we wouldn't get into a scrap with Iran because of the relation between Iran and China, and China and us (america).

Bush pushed out saddam because he was opressing the people

I don't even think this is true, sadly. America has had plenty of opportunity to overthrow Saddam in the past - the best opportunity came in the 80s, when Bush Senior was asked for help by the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. He encouraged them, and promised his support. When it came to it, however, he sat back and didn't lift a finger to help, as the rebels were mercilessly crushed.

I think the recent invasion had nothing to do with anything so noble as helping out an oppressed people. I remember when the war was first being mooted, and the reasons put forward had everything to do with the WTO attack (apparently), and precious little else. It wasn't until the war progresses, and the WTO excuse was largely ridiculed, that they started spinning the line that they were doing it to get rid of an evil regime. Even then, the argument looked weak - bad as Saddam may have been, there were worse regimes than his, and ones that clearly threatened the West (and still do), in a way that Saddam never really did. In short, I reckon the war only happened because Bush wanted to appear decisive after 9/11 when he clearly had no idea what to do at all. I don't even think it has much to do with oil - that's just a benefit that could be exploited as a side consequence. Even then, I doubt the Americans want to steal the oil - they could have struck a deal with Saddam any time they wanted to. But, controlling the supply might be rather a handy thing...

It's been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. This war, like many others, was based on lies. It was not and is not being fought for the American or the Iraqi people. Nothing good has come or will come of it.

Rich corporations are getting richer off this war with our tax money, the lives and health of our people, and the wealth of our country. How long will it take to recover from the war? Many will never recover.

The troops are being used and abused and afterwards are discarded. The f*ing politicians that supported this war are criminals. And Bush, as stupid as he is, is a liar and a criminal.

I recently learned of the death of a friend who was a Viet Nam veteran. That war was "over" over 30 years ago. I thought that he had returned to a fairly normal life, but at the end, when he wasn't in a wheel chair on oxygen, he was hiding under his bed dodging "bullets". He never recovered from that war. His wounds were not obvious physical wounds, but he was mortally wounded none-the-less.

America and the world will be paying for this war for a hundred years. Or more.