Wedding Party Massacre? Doubtful..... [Archive]

Jim Yanik

May 23rd 04, 05:32 AM

Scott MacEachern > wrote in
:

> On 22 May 2004 22:59:32 GMT, (Dav1936531) wrote:
>
>>http://tinyurl.com/2qklu
>>Dave
>
> "Kimmitt said troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent,
> gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would
> indicate a wedding had been held."
>
> Funny. I wonder what those ripped-up speakers and the microphone
> stands (not musical instruments, I guess...) in the NYT pictures from
> the site were doing there, then?
>
> Note as well that Kimmitt is now admitting that (a) there were women
> killed there and (b) there may have been some sort of celebration
> going on. And, shamelessly quoting from another post of mine...
>
> Having spent some time working in border areas in Central/West Africa
> -- Nigeria-Cameroon-Niger and latterly Cameroon-Chad-CAR -- there are
> smugglers all over the place, and they haul all kinds of good with
> them. Finding large amounts of clothing, bedding and so on wouldn't be
> surprising at all in such cases -- think of it as capitalism at work.
> I'd be very surprised if that wasn't how most of the consumer goods in
> Baghdad made their way there.
>
> Scott

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/22/iraq.main/index.html

an excerpt;

What was found, he said, indicated the building was used as a way station
for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria to battle the coalition.

"The building seemed to be somewhat of a dormitory," Kimmitt said. "You
had over 300 sets of bedding gear in it. You had a tremendous number of
pre-packaged clothing -- apparently about a hundred sets of pre-packaged
clothing.

"[It is] expected that when foreign fighters come in from other countries,
they come to this location, they change their clothes into typical Iraqi
clothing sets."

At Saturday's briefing for reporters in Baghdad, Kimmitt showed photos of
what he said were binoculars designed for adjusting artillery fire, battery
packs suitable for makeshift bombs, several terrorist training manuals,
medical gear,fake ID cards and ID card-making machines, passports and
telephone numbers to other countries, including Afghanistan and Sudan.

None of the men killed in the raid carried ID cards or wallets, he said.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

Mike Baudrillard

May 23rd 04, 01:09 PM

Scott MacEachern > wrote in message >...
> On 22 May 2004 22:59:32 GMT, (Dav1936531) wrote:
>
> >http://tinyurl.com/2qklu
> >Dave
>
> "Kimmitt said troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent,
> gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would
> indicate a wedding had been held."

They didn't find any weapons outside of what one would expect a group
of villagers to possess. They put on show a paltry amount that would
not impress Charlton Heston to the extent it was more than he had in
his cupboards.

>
> Funny. I wonder what those ripped-up speakers and the microphone
> stands (not musical instruments, I guess...) in the NYT pictures from
> the site were doing there, then?
>
> Note as well that Kimmitt is now admitting that (a) there were women
> killed there and (b) there may have been some sort of celebration
> going on. And, shamelessly quoting from another post of mine...

It was probably a pre-something celebration which poorly armed drug
dealing Syrian terrorists by tradition get involved with in the middle
of nowhere.

I suppose it is an explanation and we should be grateful for whatever
the US military feel able to offer.

Usually they offer no explanation and get troublesome journalists
black-listed. there might be acfew holes in their story, but they had
a story and it is indeed remarkable that they shared it with us.

>
> Having spent some time working in border areas in Central/West Africa
> -- Nigeria-Cameroon-Niger and latterly Cameroon-Chad-CAR -- there are
> smugglers all over the place, and they haul all kinds of good with
> them. Finding large amounts of clothing, bedding and so on wouldn't be
> surprising at all in such cases -- think of it as capitalism at work.
> I'd be very surprised if that wasn't how most of the consumer goods in
> Baghdad made their way there.
>
> Scott

Keith Willshaw

May 23rd 04, 01:22 PM

"Eric Moore" > wrote in message
m...
> (Dav1936531) wrote in message
>...
> > http://tinyurl.com/2qklu
> > Dave

> Interesting stuff. Perhaps the effect of media coverage
> (whether it's accurate or not) on military operations is the
> *true* "Revolution in Military Affairs".

Hardly, it was a major factor in the Crimean and Boer Wars

Keith

Paul Elliot

May 24th 04, 05:30 AM

Mike Baudrillard wrote:

>Scott MacEachern > wrote in message >...
>
>
>>On 22 May 2004 22:59:32 GMT, (Dav1936531) wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>http://tinyurl.com/2qklu
>>>Dave
>>>
>>>
>>"Kimmitt said troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent,
>>gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would
>>indicate a wedding had been held."
>>
>>
>
>
>They didn't find any weapons outside of what one would expect a group
>of villagers to possess. They put on show a paltry amount that would
>not impress Charlton Heston to the extent it was more than he had in
>his cupboards.
>
>
>
>
>>Funny. I wonder what those ripped-up speakers and the microphone
>>stands (not musical instruments, I guess...) in the NYT pictures from
>>the site were doing there, then?
>>
>>Note as well that Kimmitt is now admitting that (a) there were women
>>killed there and (b) there may have been some sort of celebration
>>going on. And, shamelessly quoting from another post of mine...
>>
>>
>
>
>It was probably a pre-something celebration which poorly armed drug
>dealing Syrian terrorists by tradition get involved with in the middle
>of nowhere.
>
>I suppose it is an explanation and we should be grateful for whatever
>the US military feel able to offer.
>
>Usually they offer no explanation and get troublesome journalists
>black-listed. there might be acfew holes in their story, but they had
>a story and it is indeed remarkable that they shared it with us.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>Having spent some time working in border areas in Central/West Africa
>>-- Nigeria-Cameroon-Niger and latterly Cameroon-Chad-CAR -- there are
>>smugglers all over the place, and they haul all kinds of good with
>>them. Finding large amounts of clothing, bedding and so on wouldn't be
>>surprising at all in such cases -- think of it as capitalism at work.
>>I'd be very surprised if that wasn't how most of the consumer goods in
>>Baghdad made their way there.
>>
>>Scott
>>
>>
Just why are we giving ANY creedence to criticism from an "alleged"
FRENCH person?

Kevin Brooks

May 24th 04, 06:26 AM

"Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
...
> On 22 May 2004 22:59:32 GMT, (Dav1936531) wrote:
>
> >http://tinyurl.com/2qklu
> >Dave
>
> "Kimmitt said troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent,
> gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would
> indicate a wedding had been held."
>
> Funny. I wonder what those ripped-up speakers and the microphone
> stands (not musical instruments, I guess...) in the NYT pictures from
> the site were doing there, then?

Never heard of terrorists using such equipment, eh?

>
> Note as well that Kimmitt is now admitting that (a) there were women
> killed there and (b) there may have been some sort of celebration
> going on. And, shamelessly quoting from another post of mine...

Not quite. What Kimmet really has said is:

"To the allegation that there was a wedding going on, there was no evidence
of a wedding," Kimmitt reiterated. "There were no decorations, no musical
instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one
would expect from a wedding celebration and no gifts.

"The men were almost all military-aged, no family elders that one would
expect to see at an event of this type," he said.

To help substantiate his comments, the general showed reporters slides of
items found at the site, which included a significant number of weapons,
battery packs used to power improvised explosive devices and a host of other
non-wedding-related items.

"There were also a number of terrorist training manuals (and) suspected
forged Iraqi IDs," he said.

Kimmitt said there may have been some kind of celebration going on at the
said, but not a wedding. "Bad people have celebrations too," he noted. "Bad
people have parties too. It may have been that what was seen as some sort of
celebration may have just been a meeting in the middle of the desert by some
people that were conducting either criminal or terrorist activities. That's
the conclusion we're continuing to draw the more we look at the material,
intelligence, post-strike, and follow-up intelligence." <end excerpt>

Looks like BG Kimmet has drawn very different conclusions from what you
have, Scott. And if you are going to quote the guy, at least do so by
paraphrasing his entire statement. Which brings into question that
oh-so-heart-wrenching previous post of yours claiming we were butchering
kids in this raid--as Kimmet noted:
""But there are still not reports of any children being killed." Kimmitt
said a videotape distributed to the media showing at least a dozen bodies,
including small children, wrapped in blankets for burial, being unloaded
from a truck doesn't look like the video taken at the site of the attack.
"None of the geography in those videos match the geography of this open
area," he noted. "But there are still some inconsistencies. We still remain
opened-minded about this. We'll continue to look into everything that's
provided to us in the way of evidence." "

http://www.dod.mil/news/May2004/n05222004_200405221.html

>
> Having spent some time working in border areas in Central/West Africa
> -- Nigeria-Cameroon-Niger and latterly Cameroon-Chad-CAR -- there are
> smugglers all over the place, and they haul all kinds of good with
> them. Finding large amounts of clothing, bedding and so on wouldn't be
> surprising at all in such cases -- think of it as capitalism at work.
> I'd be very surprised if that wasn't how most of the consumer goods in
> Baghdad made their way there.

And all of those smugglers have terrorist training manuals in their
possession...yeah, riiiight.

Brooks

>
> Scott

Tamas Feher

May 24th 04, 09:28 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm

Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
recovered.
+
Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
guy who filmed the home video above.

BBC is the remorse of the world!

raymond o'hara

May 24th 04, 01:35 PM

"Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
...
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
>
> Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> recovered.
> +
> Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
> guy who filmed the home video above.
>
> BBC is the remorse of the world!
>
>

celebrating with machineguns in a war zone will get you killed . the same
thing happened in af-g-stan , they have to lose that habit . not to mention
the thousands wounded and killed a every year by these celebrations ,

George Z. Bush

May 24th 04, 04:09 PM

"raymond o'hara" > wrote in message
news:z_lsc.52835$gr.5091710@attbi_s52...
>
> "Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
> ...
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
> >
> > Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> > recovered.
> > +
> > Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
> > guy who filmed the home video above.
> >
> > BBC is the remorse of the world!
> >
> >
>
>
> celebrating with machineguns in a war zone will get you killed . the same
> thing happened in af-g-stan , they have to lose that habit . not to mention
> the thousands wounded and killed a every year by these celebrations ,

Yeah, the nerve of those people.....having customs like that in their own
country! Where do they get off doing stuff like that?
(^-^)))

George Z.

Leslie Swartz

May 24th 04, 04:11 PM

Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real hard
to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare indeed.

Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in question?

Anything?

Steve Swartz

"Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
...
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
>
> Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> recovered.
> +
> Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
> guy who filmed the home video above.
>
> BBC is the remorse of the world!
>
>

raymond o'hara

May 24th 04, 04:14 PM

"George Z. Bush" > wrote in message
...
>
> "raymond o'hara" > wrote in message
> news:z_lsc.52835$gr.5091710@attbi_s52...
> >
> > "Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
> > ...
> > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
> > >
> > > Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> > > recovered.
> > > +
> > > Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the
very
> > > guy who filmed the home video above.
> > >
> > > BBC is the remorse of the world!
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > celebrating with machineguns in a war zone will get you killed . the
same
> > thing happened in af-g-stan , they have to lose that habit . not to
mention
> > the thousands wounded and killed a every year by these celebrations ,
>
> Yeah, the nerve of those people.....having customs like that in their own
> country! Where do they get off doing stuff like that?
> (^-^)))
>
> George Z.
>
>

it's fine in peacetime idiot, but firing mg's in a war zone will get you
killed .

Chad Irby

May 24th 04, 04:47 PM

In article >,
"Tamas Feher" > wrote:

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
>
> Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> recovered.
> +
> Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
> guy who filmed the home video above.

Well, the video shown on the BBC shows *a* party or wedding. It could
have been shot at any time over the last year or more, as far as that
goes.

> BBC is the remorse of the world!

They're certainly a reason for remorse in the UK. The BBC used to be
pretty good, until they let their new coverage quality slide so much.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

George Z. Bush

May 24th 04, 07:02 PM

"raymond o'hara" > wrote in message
news:Kjosc.108968$iF6.9831270@attbi_s02...
>
> "George Z. Bush" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> > "raymond o'hara" > wrote in message
> > news:z_lsc.52835$gr.5091710@attbi_s52...
> > >
> > > "Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
> > > ...
> > > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
> > > >
> > > > Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> > > > recovered.
> > > > +
> > > > Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the
> very
> > > > guy who filmed the home video above.
> > > >
> > > > BBC is the remorse of the world!
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > celebrating with machineguns in a war zone will get you killed . the
> same
> > > thing happened in af-g-stan , they have to lose that habit . not to
> mention
> > > the thousands wounded and killed a every year by these celebrations ,
> >
> > Yeah, the nerve of those people.....having customs like that in their own
> > country! Where do they get off doing stuff like that?
> > (^-^)))
> >
> > George Z.
> >
> >
>
> it's fine in peacetime idiot, but firing mg's in a war zone will get you
> killed .

Yeah, us idiots never know when our leg is being pulled....so, welcome to the
club, pal! You did such a great job with your application, we're re-doing the
rules and making you a charter member.

George Z.
>
>

Scott MacEachern

May 24th 04, 07:33 PM

"Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message >...

> Never heard of terrorists using such equipment, eh?

Right. Al-Qaeda: The Musical....

> Looks like BG Kimmet has drawn very different conclusions from what you
> have, Scott. And if you are going to quote the guy, at least do so by
> paraphrasing his entire statement.

How about today, then, from the briefing transcript: "...But I would
tell you that, again, day after day after day, as we continue to get
more evidence in, as we continue to get more new evidence coming in,
it is pretty clear to us that what happened that night from the --
about after midnight until about 0400 -- that the activities that we
saw happening on the ground were somewhat inconsistent with a wedding
party. And it could well have been, as we have said before, that
there was some sort of celebration going on. ..."

"...somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party...."

Yeah. There's a ringing statement of confidence.

Scott

Kevin Brooks

May 24th 04, 08:29 PM

"Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
om...
> "Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message
>...
>
> > Never heard of terrorists using such equipment, eh?
>
> Right. Al-Qaeda: The Musical....
>
> > Looks like BG Kimmet has drawn very different conclusions from what you
> > have, Scott. And if you are going to quote the guy, at least do so by
> > paraphrasing his entire statement.
>
> How about today, then, from the briefing transcript: "...But I would
> tell you that, again, day after day after day, as we continue to get
> more evidence in, as we continue to get more new evidence coming in,
> it is pretty clear to us that what happened that night from the --
> about after midnight until about 0400 -- that the activities that we
> saw happening on the ground were somewhat inconsistent with a wedding
> party. And it could well have been, as we have said before, that
> there was some sort of celebration going on. ..."

You conveniently missed the PICTURE that showed the rocket launchers, and
rounds these "wedding party" folks were found with? Hell of a wedding
gift..."Oh, honey, look! It's that RPG-7 we were hoping to get!"

And all of those *Sudanese* attendants..heck of along way to travel for a
wedding in those parts...

>
> "...somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party...."
>
> Yeah. There's a ringing statement of confidence.

How about his quote: "But at this point, we have seen really nothing that
causes us to be -- to change our minds."

Or: "We have found no evidence of any children being killed, by people on
the ground. We had a ground force element that went through the objective.
It did not identify any children killed. And so this, again, is part of
what needs to be determined by an unbiased investigation. And that's
exactly what we're taking forward." (This has been your pet peeve, right?
The alleged butchering of children?)

Or: "But the intelligence that we had, that got us there, what we found on
the ground and our post-strike analysis suggests that what we had was a
significant foreign-fighter waystation, smuggler waystation in the middle of
the desert that was bringing people into this country for the sole purpose
of attacking to kill the people of Iraq. We have a responsibility to
maintain a safe and secure environment. That is our responsibility, that is
our obligation, and we will carry that out."

Again, a bit different from the version of Kimmet's words you keep
parroting.

Brooks

>
> Scott

John Mullen

May 24th 04, 11:31 PM

"Chad Irby" > wrote in message
m...
> In article >,
> "Tamas Feher" > wrote:
>
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
> >
> > Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> > recovered.
> > +
> > Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
> > guy who filmed the home video above.
>
> Well, the video shown on the BBC shows *a* party or wedding. It could
> have been shot at any time over the last year or more, as far as that
> goes.
>
> > BBC is the remorse of the world!
>
> They're certainly a reason for remorse in the UK. The BBC used to be
> pretty good, until they let their new coverage quality slide so much.

Although I actually agree with your sentiment here, from experience of both,
I think the BBC still kicks the ass off any US news coverage. Fewer vested
interests, less need to toe the party line.

John

Chad Irby

May 25th 04, 12:16 AM

In article >,
"John Mullen" > wrote:

> "Chad Irby" > wrote in message
> m...
> >
> > They're certainly a reason for remorse in the UK. The BBC used to be
> > pretty good, until they let their new coverage quality slide so much.
>
> Although I actually agree with your sentiment here, from experience of both,
> I think the BBC still kicks the ass off any US news coverage. Fewer vested
> interests, less need to toe the party line.

One telling problem with the Beeb right now is their lack of coverage on
the Oil for Food scandal. *Very* little coverage, and what's there
isn't exactly hard hitting.

Note also that when they mention Hamas (or other Mideast terror groups)
in an article, they don't call them terrorists. They call them
militants or something less direct. When the word terrorist *is* used
in a BBC story, it's usually inserted in "scare quotes."

So Hamas isn't a bunch of terrorists. It's a militant group, or a
so-called "terrorist" group.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

Jim Yanik

May 25th 04, 12:46 AM

"Kevin Brooks" > wrote in
:

>
> "Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
> om...
>> "Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message
> >...
>>
>> > Never heard of terrorists using such equipment, eh?
>>
>> Right. Al-Qaeda: The Musical....
>>
>> > Looks like BG Kimmet has drawn very different conclusions from what
>> > you have, Scott. And if you are going to quote the guy, at least do
>> > so by paraphrasing his entire statement.
>>
>> How about today, then, from the briefing transcript: "...But I would
>> tell you that, again, day after day after day, as we continue to get
>> more evidence in, as we continue to get more new evidence coming in,
>> it is pretty clear to us that what happened that night from the --
>> about after midnight until about 0400 -- that the activities that we
>> saw happening on the ground were somewhat inconsistent with a wedding
>> party. And it could well have been, as we have said before, that
>> there was some sort of celebration going on. ..."
>
> You conveniently missed the PICTURE that showed the rocket launchers,
> and rounds these "wedding party" folks were found with? Hell of a
> wedding gift..."Oh, honey, look! It's that RPG-7 we were hoping to
> get!"
>
> And all of those *Sudanese* attendants..heck of along way to travel
> for a wedding in those parts...
>
>>
>> "...somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party...."
>>
>> Yeah. There's a ringing statement of confidence.
>
> How about his quote: "But at this point, we have seen really nothing
> that causes us to be -- to change our minds."
>
> Or: "We have found no evidence of any children being killed, by people
> on the ground. We had a ground force element that went through the
> objective. It did not identify any children killed. And so this,
> again, is part of what needs to be determined by an unbiased
> investigation. And that's exactly what we're taking forward." (This
> has been your pet peeve, right? The alleged butchering of children?)
>
> Or: "But the intelligence that we had, that got us there, what we
> found on the ground and our post-strike analysis suggests that what we
> had was a significant foreign-fighter waystation, smuggler waystation
> in the middle of the desert that was bringing people into this country
> for the sole purpose of attacking to kill the people of Iraq. We have
> a responsibility to maintain a safe and secure environment. That is
> our responsibility, that is our obligation, and we will carry that
> out."
>
> Again, a bit different from the version of Kimmet's words you keep
> parroting.
>
> Brooks
>
>>
>> Scott
>
>
>

Face reality;you or anyone else here is not going to convince Mr.MacEachern
of anything favorable to the US. His mind is made up regardless of any
facts to the contrary.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

Kevin Brooks

May 25th 04, 01:37 AM

"Jim Yanik" > wrote in message
.. .
> "Kevin Brooks" > wrote in
> :
>
> >
> > "Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
> > om...
> >> "Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message
> > >...
> >>
> >> > Never heard of terrorists using such equipment, eh?
> >>
> >> Right. Al-Qaeda: The Musical....
> >>
> >> > Looks like BG Kimmet has drawn very different conclusions from what
> >> > you have, Scott. And if you are going to quote the guy, at least do
> >> > so by paraphrasing his entire statement.
> >>
> >> How about today, then, from the briefing transcript: "...But I would
> >> tell you that, again, day after day after day, as we continue to get
> >> more evidence in, as we continue to get more new evidence coming in,
> >> it is pretty clear to us that what happened that night from the --
> >> about after midnight until about 0400 -- that the activities that we
> >> saw happening on the ground were somewhat inconsistent with a wedding
> >> party. And it could well have been, as we have said before, that
> >> there was some sort of celebration going on. ..."
> >
> > You conveniently missed the PICTURE that showed the rocket launchers,
> > and rounds these "wedding party" folks were found with? Hell of a
> > wedding gift..."Oh, honey, look! It's that RPG-7 we were hoping to
> > get!"
> >
> > And all of those *Sudanese* attendants..heck of along way to travel
> > for a wedding in those parts...
> >
> >>
> >> "...somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party...."
> >>
> >> Yeah. There's a ringing statement of confidence.
> >
> > How about his quote: "But at this point, we have seen really nothing
> > that causes us to be -- to change our minds."
> >
> > Or: "We have found no evidence of any children being killed, by people
> > on the ground. We had a ground force element that went through the
> > objective. It did not identify any children killed. And so this,
> > again, is part of what needs to be determined by an unbiased
> > investigation. And that's exactly what we're taking forward." (This
> > has been your pet peeve, right? The alleged butchering of children?)
> >
> > Or: "But the intelligence that we had, that got us there, what we
> > found on the ground and our post-strike analysis suggests that what we
> > had was a significant foreign-fighter waystation, smuggler waystation
> > in the middle of the desert that was bringing people into this country
> > for the sole purpose of attacking to kill the people of Iraq. We have
> > a responsibility to maintain a safe and secure environment. That is
> > our responsibility, that is our obligation, and we will carry that
> > out."
> >
> > Again, a bit different from the version of Kimmet's words you keep
> > parroting.
> >
> > Brooks
> >
> >>
> >> Scott
> >
> >
> >
>
> Face reality;you or anyone else here is not going to convince
Mr.MacEachern
> of anything favorable to the US. His mind is made up regardless of any
> facts to the contrary.

True, but letting him get away with his "rewriting" of Kimmet's quotes
through judicious snippage and inaccurate/incomplete paraphrasing does not
serve much purpose, either. Isn't he the transplanted Canuck? If so, one
wonders why, if he is so disgusted with his nation, as he makes clear at
every opportunity, he doesn't just pack up and head back home?

Brooks
>
> --
> Jim Yanik
> jyanik-at-kua.net

Scott MacEachern

May 25th 04, 02:31 AM

On Mon, 24 May 2004 15:29:15 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
> wrote:

>You conveniently missed the PICTURE that showed the rocket launchers,

There are no slides (that I can see, anyway) with the transcript at
http://www.dod.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040524-0793.html. And oh, yes,
if there's an RPG it must involve insurgents. After all, who else in a
law-abiding country like Iraq would own an RPG?

>And all of those *Sudanese* attendants..heck of along way to travel for a
>wedding in those parts...

Why so? People travel all over the Middle East: Sudanese (and not
Muslims, but Nuer and Dinka from the south) were an important element
in the construction force in Yemen and Jordan for quite some time. Do
you actually think that, after the degree of smuggling tolerated by
all sides (even America, in Kurdistan) during Saddam's rule, movement
of peopel an dgoods has just stopped?

> (This has been your pet peeve, right?
>The alleged butchering of children?)

Quite a bit of it, yes. (They found no children being killed... except
of course for all of those people who say that children were killed.
But hell, they're only Iraqis, right?) But more generally than that
the idea that in occupied Iraq (or Afghanistan) the best procedure in
such a case is simply to bomb the hell out of the place and then ask
questions and stonewall later. Because what Kimmitt is making clear is
that he _doesn't know what that meeting was_. Here he is again, from
the section of the transcript that you quoted:
>
>...our post-strike analysis suggests that what we had was a
>significant foreign-fighter waystation, smuggler waystation in the middle of
>the desert ...

and he's treating them as if they were the same thing. But as far as I
know being a smuggler in Iraq is not supposed to automatically bring a
sentence of Death From On High. Still less attending a wedding.

Scott

Scott MacEachern

May 25th 04, 02:32 AM

On Mon, 24 May 2004 04:30:21 GMT, Paul Elliot >
wrote:

>Just why are we giving ANY creedence to criticism from an "alleged"
>FRENCH person?

Who, me? I'm Canadian, and I've worked in different parts of Africa --
but mostly in the area I mentioned -- through the last 20 years.

Scott

Scott MacEachern

May 25th 04, 03:14 AM

On Mon, 24 May 2004 20:37:00 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
> wrote:

>If so, one
>wonders why, if he is so disgusted with his nation, as he makes clear at
>every opportunity, he doesn't just pack up and head back home?

Oh, but Mr Brooks, I'm not disgusted with the United States at all. I
do sometimes get a little bored with this rock-headed,
love-it-or-leave-it chauvinism that passes for patriotism on
america.net, but I see rather less of that in real life.

(You might note that the last time I was invited on r.a.m. to go home
to Soviet Canuckistan, it was by some of your compatriots,
_outraged_!, yes _outraged_! that someone might say that there were
grounds for thinking that American soldiers were abusing prisoners in
Afghanistan....)

And where have I 'rewritten' General Kimmitt's comments? The poor
general doesn't seem to know quite what to think about what happened
in the case we're arguing about, but that's hardly my fault.

Scott

Kevin Brooks

May 25th 04, 04:33 AM

"Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
...
> On Mon, 24 May 2004 20:37:00 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
> > wrote:
>
> >If so, one
> >wonders why, if he is so disgusted with his nation, as he makes clear at
> >every opportunity, he doesn't just pack up and head back home?
>
> Oh, but Mr Brooks, I'm not disgusted with the United States at all. I
> do sometimes get a little bored with this rock-headed,
> love-it-or-leave-it chauvinism that passes for patriotism on
> america.net, but I see rather less of that in real life.

Out of curiousity--when was the last time you posted something positive
about the US, or its military forces, or its military operations (and keep
this in the modern era, please)? My observation to date is that you are
pretty much a continual naysayer in regards to the US. Yeah, you have the
right to do so--that is why our military exists, to ensure you keep that
right. But if you are so disgusted with us, and find things so much more
likeable across the border, why don't you go back? Why stay in such a nasty
place that foments the likes of GWB and a US military force you despise?

>
> (You might note that the last time I was invited on r.a.m. to go home
> to Soviet Canuckistan, it was by some of your compatriots,
> _outraged_!, yes _outraged_! that someone might say that there were
> grounds for thinking that American soldiers were abusing prisoners in
> Afghanistan....)
>
> And where have I 'rewritten' General Kimmitt's comments? The poor
> general doesn't seem to know quite what to think about what happened
> in the case we're arguing about, but that's hardly my fault.

You have inaccurately paraphrased, or incompletely paraphrased his
statements to the point of changing his meaning. As a big "edumacator" you
ought to be familiar with that process, which was at least when I went
through school highly frowned upon as being intellectually dishonest.

Brooks

>
> Scott

Kevin Brooks

May 25th 04, 04:47 AM

"Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
...
> On Mon, 24 May 2004 15:29:15 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
> > wrote:
>
> >You conveniently missed the PICTURE that showed the rocket launchers,
>
> There are no slides (that I can see, anyway) with the transcript at
> http://www.dod.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040524-0793.html. And oh, yes,
> if there's an RPG it must involve insurgents. After all, who else in a
> law-abiding country like Iraq would own an RPG?

The pictures were shown at the brief, but curiously none of the news outlets
seem to want to run them on their sites, as best I can determine
(understandable--they in general much prefer running anti-US materiel, of
course). And yeah, having an RPG and a few extra projectiles for it does
seem to point to something a bit more sinister than your run-of-the-mill
"wedding party", or even your "smugglers". Which does bring to mind another
possibility--what if it was a "smuggling operation" aimed at providing
supplies to the insurgents/terrorists? Guess that still makes them a
non-target in your mind, eh?

>
> >And all of those *Sudanese* attendants..heck of along way to travel for a
> >wedding in those parts...
>
> Why so? People travel all over the Middle East: Sudanese (and not
> Muslims, but Nuer and Dinka from the south) were an important element
> in the construction force in Yemen and Jordan for quite some time. Do
> you actually think that, after the degree of smuggling tolerated by
> all sides (even America, in Kurdistan) during Saddam's rule, movement
> of peopel an dgoods has just stopped?

So you find it quite understandable that a large number of Sudanese men of
military age, armed to the degree we have seen thus far in this case, and
carrying a pretty grand portable field medical set with them, etc., are just
your average local smugglers, right? Used car salesmen must love you..."No,
sir, that is NOT a dent! That is a...uhmmm...a, errr.... BEAUTY MARK! Yeah,
that's what it is! And I tell you what, sir, I don't do this for just
anybody, but for *you* I'll let you have that feature at NO EXTRA COST!"

>
> > (This has been your pet peeve, right?
> >The alleged butchering of children?)
>
> Quite a bit of it, yes. (They found no children being killed... except
> of course for all of those people who say that children were killed.
> But hell, they're only Iraqis, right?) But more generally than that
> the idea that in occupied Iraq (or Afghanistan) the best procedure in
> such a case is simply to bomb the hell out of the place and then ask
> questions and stonewall later. Because what Kimmitt is making clear is
> that he _doesn't know what that meeting was_. Here he is again, from
> the section of the transcript that you quoted:
> >
> >...our post-strike analysis suggests that what we had was a
> >significant foreign-fighter waystation, smuggler waystation in the middle
of
> >the desert ...
>
> and he's treating them as if they were the same thing. But as far as I
> know being a smuggler in Iraq is not supposed to automatically bring a
> sentence of Death From On High. Still less attending a wedding.

Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound like a
viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?
Yep...lots of Suadanese smugglers a long way from home, with terrorist
training manuals, armed to the teeth, to include at least one RPG, battery
kits of the same type being used to set off IED's, etc.... Yep, they are
most definitely innocent bystanders--the PA system proves it, right?!

Brooks

>
> Scott
>

Tamas Feher

May 25th 04, 08:24 AM

>So Hamas isn't a bunch of terrorists. It's a militant group, or a
>so-called "terrorist" group.

As long as Palestine and East Jerusalem is occupied, Hamas is free to
blow up whatever they want. Just like the WWII soviet partisans, Tito's
yugoslavian partisans, the french armed resistance or the anti-Quisling
norwegians did it. Trains, buses, automobiles, bridges and buildings,
anything israeli or Third Reich. It is their unalienable right to scare
the invaders off their occupied land. It is harder to do now, cause
palestinian do not receive any foreign supply comparable what Tito got
from the USA and USSR. They are practically fighting bare handed (AK-47
and homemade junk against heavy tanks).

But be sure, Allah is patient, and arabs have time on their hands, like
sand in the desert. Years are like seconds for the almighty. Some time
the sons of Allah will regain their land.

I think israelis should move to California and live there. They have
done so much harm and terror to the middle east in the last 55 years
(invasions, 200+ nuclear bombs, biological weapons of ethnically
selective mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, etc.) that you really
cannot expect arabs to live in peace with them ever. Damn it, jews they
still didn't pay the gov't of Lebanon for all the destruction they did
in those 22 years of occupation of the southern part of the country.

Regards, Tamas Feher.

Aardvark J. Bandersnatch, MP

May 25th 04, 02:33 PM

"Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
...
> >So Hamas isn't a bunch of terrorists. It's a militant group, or a
> >so-called "terrorist" group.
>
> As long as Palestine and East Jerusalem is occupied, Hamas is free to
> blow up whatever they want. Just like the WWII soviet partisans, Tito's
> yugoslavian partisans, the french armed resistance or the anti-Quisling
> norwegians did it. Trains, buses, automobiles, bridges and buildings,
> anything israeli or Third Reich. It is their unalienable right to scare
> the invaders off their occupied land. It is harder to do now, cause
> palestinian do not receive any foreign supply comparable what Tito got
> from the USA and USSR. They are practically fighting bare handed (AK-47
> and homemade junk against heavy tanks).
>
> But be sure, Allah is patient, and arabs have time on their hands, like
> sand in the desert. Years are like seconds for the almighty. Some time
> the sons of Allah will regain their land.

God is patient, and the Israelis have time on their hands, like sand on the
beach. Millenia are but seconds to the almight. The children of God will
retain their land.

> I think israelis should move to California and live there. They have
> done so much harm and terror to the middle east in the last 55 years
> (invasions, 200+ nuclear bombs, biological weapons of ethnically
> selective mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, etc.) that you really
> cannot expect arabs to live in peace with them ever. Damn it, jews they
> still didn't pay the gov't of Lebanon for all the destruction they did
> in those 22 years of occupation of the southern part of the country.

I think Arabs should just move to California and live there. They have done
so much harm and terror to the middle east in the last 600 years (invasions,
bombs, biological weapons, ethnic cleansing, fratricide, regicide,
matricide, suicide, genocide, etc.) that you really cannot expect arabs to
live in peace with anyone ever. Damn it, Arabs still haven't paid each other
for all the destruction they've done in the centuries they've been
butchering each other.

Paul J. Adam

May 25th 04, 03:27 PM

In message <Kjosc.108968$iF6.9831270@attbi_s02>, raymond o'hara
> writes
>"George Z. Bush" > wrote in message
...
>> Yeah, the nerve of those people.....having customs like that in their own
>> country! Where do they get off doing stuff like that?
>> (^-^)))

> it's fine in peacetime idiot, but firing mg's in a war zone will get you
>killed .

It's not a "war zone" - major combat operations ended last year. Your
President said so, I saw him on the televisualiser gadget thingy,
standing on one of his big grey war canoes.

What, was he wrong or something? Isn't anyone going to tell him?

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Scott MacEachern

May 25th 04, 03:35 PM

"Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message >...

> The pictures were shown at the brief, but curiously none of the news outlets
> seem to want to run them on their sites, as best I can determine
> (understandable--they in general much prefer running anti-US materiel, of
> course).

Of course. That must be why they're not on dod.mil as well.
Subversives in the Pentagon, no doubt.

> what if it was a "smuggling operation" aimed at providing
> supplies to the insurgents/terrorists? Guess that still makes them a
> non-target in your mind, eh?

Nope. What it does indicate is that _it would be a capital idea to
know who they are before blowing them up_! Kimmitt's various
statements over the last few days make it clear that the military did
not know what was out there: terrorists? smugglers? bad people? bad
people having celebrations? women? children? musicians from Baghdad?
What are you going to do, just fly over the Western desert of Iraq and
drop bombs on everyone who moves?

> So you find it quite understandable that a large number of Sudanese men of
> military age, armed to the degree we have seen thus far in this case, and
> carrying a pretty grand portable field medical set with them, etc ...

Where did this come from? One passport from Sudan, from what Kimmitt
said on the 22nd. A medical examinationtable on the site. Syringes.
This is a 'pretty grand portable field medical set '? AKs and an
RPG.... in Iraq.

> Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound like a
> viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?

So are AKs. Are you going to declare open season on everyone in Iraq
who owns an AK, as well? A pistol... don't forget, there were some of
those found, too. Do you want to kill everyone in Iraq who owns a
pistol?

> Yep...lots of Suadanese smugglers a long way from home, with terrorist
> training manuals, armed to the teeth, to include at least one RPG, battery
> kits of the same type being used to set off IED's, etc.... Yep, they are
> most definitely innocent bystanders--the PA system proves it, right?!

Quite a bit of this seems to be your imagination. You might note that
the 'terrorist training manuals' seem to have disappeared from the
last briefing given by Kimmitt, although you'd think they'd be pretty
determinative. And as for teh rest... no, I can't see anything in
there that proves these anything but bystanders, innocent or not.

You also conveniently forget to mention video of the wedding, video of
smashed musical instruments and furniture taken by AP last week,
grieving widows in Baghdad, pictures of women and kids being buried.
But hell, that's only Iraqis, eh? Not nearly as convincing as a nice,
clean briefing room in Baghdad...

Scott

Paul J. Adam

May 25th 04, 03:37 PM

In message >, Chad Irby
> writes
>Well, the video shown on the BBC shows *a* party or wedding. It could
>have been shot at any time over the last year or more, as far as that
>goes.

I've seen the footage, but it's been heavily caveated - this "purports"
(the BBC's word, not mine) to be film of the wedding party before the
attack, and footage of the aftermath, but firm evidence is lacking to
date.

The original source for both the footage and some of the claims is
Associated Press TV News.

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Kevin Brooks

May 25th 04, 04:16 PM

"Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
om...
> "Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message
>...
>
> > The pictures were shown at the brief, but curiously none of the news
outlets
> > seem to want to run them on their sites, as best I can determine
> > (understandable--they in general much prefer running anti-US materiel,
of
> > course).
>
> Of course. That must be why they're not on dod.mil as well.
> Subversives in the Pentagon, no doubt.

Yeah, no doubt they were all fabricated before they were shown to the media
folks at that press brief yesterday, right? In your fervent imagination that
may be the case...

>
> > what if it was a "smuggling operation" aimed at providing
> > supplies to the insurgents/terrorists? Guess that still makes them a
> > non-target in your mind, eh?
>
> Nope. What it does indicate is that _it would be a capital idea to
> know who they are before blowing them up_!

Well, when they started shooting at US forces, they kind of crapped up the
ol' "OK, everybody put your guns down and let's talk..." approach, now
didn't they?

Kimmitt's various
> statements over the last few days make it clear that the military did
> not know what was out there: terrorists? smugglers? bad people? bad
> people having celebrations? women? children? musicians from Baghdad?
> What are you going to do, just fly over the Western desert of Iraq and
> drop bombs on everyone who moves?

Kimmitt:

"But the intelligence that we had, that got us there, what we found on the
ground and our post-strike analysis suggests that what we had was a
significant foreign-fighter waystation, smuggler waystation in the middle of
the desert that was bringing people into this country for the sole purpose
of attacking to kill the people of Iraq. We have a responsibility to
maintain a safe and secure environment. That is our responsibility, that is
our obligation, and we will carry that out."

Your paraphrasing again leaves a lot out.

>
> > So you find it quite understandable that a large number of Sudanese men
of
> > military age, armed to the degree we have seen thus far in this case,
and
> > carrying a pretty grand portable field medical set with them, etc ...
>
> Where did this come from? One passport from Sudan, from what Kimmitt
> said on the 22nd.

Same source on the 24th: "These are the passports of Sudanese citizens that
were involved in the raid." Note the use of plural "passports".

A medical examinationtable on the site. Syringes.
> This is a 'pretty grand portable field medical set '? AKs and an
> RPG.... in Iraq.

Kimmittt: "More weapons, battery packs that we typically associate with
those that are used for improvised explosive devices, a full-sized medical
treatment bed for hasty operations in the field; top right, as we've showed
before, the binoculars that had reticle patterns in them that one typically
uses for adjusting artillery, adjusting mortar rounds."

>
> > Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound like
a
> > viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?
>
> So are AKs. Are you going to declare open season on everyone in Iraq
> who owns an AK, as well? A pistol... don't forget, there were some of
> those found, too. Do you want to kill everyone in Iraq who owns a
> pistol?

RPG does not equal pistol. You need to get back to the basics of
weaponeering--you obviously are having a bit of difficulty with basic
concepts.

>
> > Yep...lots of Suadanese smugglers a long way from home, with terrorist
> > training manuals, armed to the teeth, to include at least one RPG,
battery
> > kits of the same type being used to set off IED's, etc.... Yep, they are
> > most definitely innocent bystanders--the PA system proves it, right?!
>
> Quite a bit of this seems to be your imagination. You might note that
> the 'terrorist training manuals' seem to have disappeared from the
> last briefing given by Kimmitt, although you'd think they'd be pretty
> determinative. And as for teh rest... no, I can't see anything in
> there that proves these anything but bystanders, innocent or not.

So now you are saying that because he does not list every piece of evidence
found *each and every time* he briefs, it never existed in the first place?

>
> You also conveniently forget to mention video of the wedding,

The jury is still out on that one, from what I have gathered.

video of
> smashed musical instruments and furniture taken by AP last week,
> grieving widows in Baghdad, pictures of women and kids being buried.
> But hell, that's only Iraqis, eh? Not nearly as convincing as a nice,
> clean briefing room in Baghdad...

Your continuing "damn the US at all costs" sentiments come through loud and
clear, as usual. I guess the possibility of bad guys manipulating the media
(not that it requires a great deal of manipulation in most cases) is to be
discounted outright, too, eh? Gosh, some of the terrorist networks even have
websites these days! Not to metion their other stalwart support sytems, like
Al Jazeerah..and you?

Brooks

Brooks

>
> Scott

Scott MacEachern

May 25th 04, 04:48 PM

"Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message >...

> Out of curiousity--when was the last time you posted something positive
> about the US, or its military forces, or its military operations (and keep
> this in the modern era, please)?

How about these most recently, in an exchange that you and I had in
February, on a thread entitled 'Re: "The New Soldier" by John Kerry et
al':

"> You and I have differing views of what makes someone "admirable". I
find the
> Army aviators who landed at My Lai and placed themselves in between the
> perpetrators and some of the soon-to-be victims as being "admirable"...

Actually, I find that admirable as well. You don't like what Kerry
said after a war that, AFAIK, he was in and you (and I) weren't? Fine,
but that's hardly a reason to condemn him, in my book."

and "Kerry went to a dumb-ass war, then opposed it when he got back...
both admirable things and fulfilling the duties of a citizen, I'd
say."

Or don't those count because the conversation involved a Democrat? I
won't even ask you to find a case in which you were critical of the
American military... I'm sure they exist, somewhere.

In any case, why would you think that I'm disgusted with America, or
even with the American military? It's a standard practice in these
forums to accuse anyone who brings these topics up of hating America
(you're actually far less dramatic about doing that than a variety of
other people...), but you must realise that it is possible to
criticise -- even consistently criticise -- particular aspects of
military affairs without hating the organisation involved.

You want a statement of principles? OK: I have a great deal of respect
for many aspects of the American military, and for American soldiers
as a group. I think that for the most part, they are professional and
sincere in what they do. I think that an American doctrinal emphasis
on overwhelming firepower is not equalled by a similar emphasis on
intelligence gathering and target confirmation, in circumstances of
expeditionary warfare where people who may be valid targets are
interspersed with innocent civilians and where military knowledge of
local populations is often abysmally low. I think that the rhetoric of
the 'War on Terror' has led American civilian leaders to put in place
procedures where significant violations of human rights, more
specifically the various Geneva Conventions, have occured; the most
systematic violations appear to have involved civilian agencies, but
military units have been involved in some cases. I think that a
military as professional as that of the United States should be able
to police its own screw-ups, and I don't like to see cases where it
doesn't. I dislike historical amnesia, and historical revisionism.

Now, you may think all of that nonsense -- and I won't care a whit.
But now you know more or less where I'm coming from.

The reasons I stay here are fairly straightforward: I find a lot of
things to admire about the United States, I like my job and I like the
community I live in. The reason I bring these issues up (here and in
other forums) are equally straightforward: I disapprove of the way
they're handled, I pay (rather substantial) taxes in America and I
don't have an American franchise to exercise. The fact that I live
here doesn't mean that I have to approve of everything your government
does, nor that I have to show any deference toward your president.
Sorry, lèse-majesté isn't even a crime in Canada, let along the USA.

> You have inaccurately paraphrased, or incompletely paraphrased his
> statements to the point of changing his meaning.

A paraphrase is necessarily incomplete, and I'm not about to paste
full transcripts into a Usenet post. If you have cases where I've
distorted what Kimmitt has said, post 'em.

Scott

Alan Minyard

May 25th 04, 05:30 PM

On Mon, 24 May 2004 21:32:42 -0400, Scott MacEachern > wrote:

>On Mon, 24 May 2004 04:30:21 GMT, Paul Elliot >
>wrote:
>
>>Just why are we giving ANY creedence to criticism from an "alleged"
>>FRENCH person?
>
>Who, me? I'm Canadian, and I've worked in different parts of Africa --
>but mostly in the area I mentioned -- through the last 20 years.
>
>Scott

You are an ass regardless of your nationality. You consistently take
"news reports" as gospel, regardless of the facts of a situation.

Being an apologist for Saddam and Al-Q is not the road to
credibility.

Al Minyard

Michael P. Reed

May 25th 04, 05:37 PM

In message >, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:

> > it's fine in peacetime idiot, but firing mg's in a war zone will get you
> >killed .
>
> It's not a "war zone"

??????

> - major combat operations ended last year.

ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it appears as
things are judged "over there." A few companies skirmishing with small groups
of insurgents hardly constitute a major battle. There has been no large scale
(corps/army) maneuvering, since the fall of Baghdad.

> Your
> President said so, I saw him on the televisualiser gadget thingy,
> standing on one of his big grey war canoes.

They aren't his, they are the U.S. public's. We are a republic, remember?

> What, was he wrong or something? Isn't anyone going to tell him?

For "he" you should have written "I," and, yes, you are, or are you attempting
to sell the notion that guerilla war is not war, therefore, a "warzone" cannot
exist? You have really stretched some of your arguing points beyond the point
of credulity of late.

--
Regards,

Michael P. Reed

Kevin Brooks

May 25th 04, 06:00 PM

"Michael P. Reed" > wrote in message
...
> In message >, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
>
> > > it's fine in peacetime idiot, but firing mg's in a war zone will get
you
> > >killed .
> >
> > It's not a "war zone"
>
> ??????
>
> > - major combat operations ended last year.
>
> ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it appears as
> things are judged "over there." A few companies skirmishing with small
groups
> of insurgents hardly constitute a major battle. There has been no large
scale
> (corps/army) maneuvering, since the fall of Baghdad.
>
> > Your
> > President said so, I saw him on the televisualiser gadget thingy,
> > standing on one of his big grey war canoes.
>
> They aren't his, they are the U.S. public's. We are a republic, remember?
>
> > What, was he wrong or something? Isn't anyone going to tell him?
>
> For "he" you should have written "I," and, yes, you are, or are you
attempting
> to sell the notion that guerilla war is not war, therefore, a "warzone"
cannot
> exist? You have really stretched some of your arguing points beyond the
point
> of credulity of late.

Watch out--he is liable to take your earlier statement, "There has been no
large scale
(corps/army) maneuvering, since the fall of Baghdad" and remove the last
phrase of it, then toss the resulting paraphrase back at you and claim you
said there was never any large-scale maneuvering, period. It would not be
the first time he has done so. Even more blatantly than this attempt to
revise the character of Bush's actual speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln,
which included, "Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the
USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq
have ended...And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing
that country...We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to
parts of that country that remain dangerous...In the battle of Afghanistan,
we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists and the camps where they
trained...Yet we also have dangerous work to complete." Notice how he has
latched onto the "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" part and tried
to twist it (rather unrealistically, as you noted) to his own purposes,
while leaving out those parts about difficult and dangerous work ahead of
us, bringing order to dangerous areas, etc., that don't suit his particular
goal at present.

Brooks

>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Michael P. Reed
>

Leslie Swartz

May 25th 04, 06:15 PM

Name me *one* territory on the surface of the entire planet that isn't
"occupied land" from somebody's perspective.

That whole "occupied lands" thing is a farce.

The palestinians have their country/homeland. It's called Jordan.

Steve Swartz

"Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
...
> >So Hamas isn't a bunch of terrorists. It's a militant group, or a
> >so-called "terrorist" group.
>
> As long as Palestine and East Jerusalem is occupied, Hamas is free to
> blow up whatever they want. Just like the WWII soviet partisans, Tito's
> yugoslavian partisans, the french armed resistance or the anti-Quisling
> norwegians did it. Trains, buses, automobiles, bridges and buildings,
> anything israeli or Third Reich. It is their unalienable right to scare
> the invaders off their occupied land. It is harder to do now, cause
> palestinian do not receive any foreign supply comparable what Tito got
> from the USA and USSR. They are practically fighting bare handed (AK-47
> and homemade junk against heavy tanks).
>
> But be sure, Allah is patient, and arabs have time on their hands, like
> sand in the desert. Years are like seconds for the almighty. Some time
> the sons of Allah will regain their land.
>
> I think israelis should move to California and live there. They have
> done so much harm and terror to the middle east in the last 55 years
> (invasions, 200+ nuclear bombs, biological weapons of ethnically
> selective mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, etc.) that you really
> cannot expect arabs to live in peace with them ever. Damn it, jews they
> still didn't pay the gov't of Lebanon for all the destruction they did
> in those 22 years of occupation of the southern part of the country.
>
> Regards, Tamas Feher.
>
>

Paul J. Adam

May 25th 04, 06:44 PM

In message >, Michael P. Reed
> writes
>In message >, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
>> It's not a "war zone"
>
>??????

Many keep saying so.
>
>> - major combat operations ended last year.
>
>ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it appears as
>things are judged "over there." A few companies skirmishing with small groups
>of insurgents hardly constitute a major battle. There has been no large scale
>(corps/army) maneuvering, since the fall of Baghdad.

So a virgin could walk the length and breadth of Iraq with her bosom
full of gold, and none might raise a hand to her?

>> What, was he wrong or something? Isn't anyone going to tell him?
>
>For "he" you should have written "I," and, yes, you are, or are you attempting
>to sell the notion that guerilla war is not war, therefore, a "warzone" cannot
>exist?

I'm not the one trying to claim that Iraq is a peaceful haven of
tranquility with just the last handful of insurgents to be winkled
out...

>You have really stretched some of your arguing points beyond the point
>of credulity of late.

Why? I'm just asking for some consistency. One minute it's a successful
and mostly peaceful occupation: the next, it's a furious insurgency with
guerillas behind every rock.

I'm willing to believe one, or the other, but not both at the same time.

>

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

John Mullen

May 25th 04, 08:47 PM

"Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
...
> Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real hard
> to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare
indeed.
>
> Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in question?
>
> Anything?

For that matter, perhaps the whole war is being faked in Hollywood. Maybe
none of it is real. Could you prove to me that it was?

Your post marks you as very naive. Maybe you are very young. A hint: wars
are not won or lost by the provability of facts. You may be thinking of
court cases?

This incident, whether it really happened or not, has caused terrible (maybe
fatal?) damage to the continued US occupation of Iraq. FWIW I believe it
really was a wedding.

John

PS Do you think all the torture pics and video were also maybe faked? How
about the moon landings...

Leslie Swartz

May 25th 04, 09:19 PM

John:

1) Leave your bogus ad hominem attacks for someone else; I don't buy them
("very young, indeed!"). The naive person is the one who believes that by
casting dubious a[psersions on the character or nature of the person
presenting hte argument, they have somehow "scored points" in the argument
itself.

2) I never stated- I never implied- that lies/propaganda have no power.
Go ahead and argue against that straw man if you like; once again, it also
(see ad hominem above) says more about you as a person than the nature of
your- or my- argument.

3) Add the straw man about "the whole war is faked" to the existing
bonfire, will you?

4) And nice go of adding a couple of other gratuitous (and irrelevant, and
reflective to your position) ad-hominem slanders and strawmen at the end as
well. You missed the obvious tin foil hat and trilateral commission ones
though.

O.K., so the crux of your argument is thus:

"I believe the wedding story is true, therefore you must be a big doody
head."

O.K., if I guess that's all you can come up with we can move on . . .

(note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and how
the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab truth
is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and fits
my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
"true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely authentic- no
fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just that
what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the providers
are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)

Steve Swartz

"John Mullen" > wrote in message
. net...
> "Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real
hard
> > to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare
> indeed.
> >
> > Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in
question?
> >
> > Anything?
>
> For that matter, perhaps the whole war is being faked in Hollywood. Maybe
> none of it is real. Could you prove to me that it was?
>
> Your post marks you as very naive. Maybe you are very young. A hint: wars
> are not won or lost by the provability of facts. You may be thinking of
> court cases?
>
> This incident, whether it really happened or not, has caused terrible
(maybe
> fatal?) damage to the continued US occupation of Iraq. FWIW I believe it
> really was a wedding.
>
> John
>
> PS Do you think all the torture pics and video were also maybe faked? How
> about the moon landings...
>
>

Alan Lothian

May 25th 04, 09:44 PM

In article >, Kevin Brooks
> wrote:

<oh, well; bang goes my ration of one off-topic post per month>

<snip of entirely reasonable points about how Bush's remarks have been
brutally edited>

> while leaving out those parts about difficult and dangerous work ahead of
> us, bringing order to dangerous areas, etc., that don't suit his particular
> goal at present.

Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong? The Abu Ghraib thing was
disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?
I don't know, but none of it looks good. And in that part of the world,
as in many others, how you look can be as important as how you do.

The wedding party.... well, if Iraqis in what is still something of a
war zone will insist on their fireworks, they shouldn't be entirely
surprised if the shooting is misinterpreted. Even so, clumsy is the
best that can be said for the Good Guys.

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" Ibn Khaldun

My .mac.com address is a spam sink.
If you wish to email me, try atlothian at blueyonder dot co dot uk

Jim Yanik

May 26th 04, 12:51 AM

"Paul J. Adam" > wrote in
:

> In message >, Michael P.
> Reed
> writes
>>In message >, "Paul J. Adam"
>>wrote:
>>> It's not a "war zone"
>>
>>??????
>
> Many keep saying so.
>>
>>> - major combat operations ended last year.
>>
>>ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it
>>appears as things are judged "over there." A few companies
>>skirmishing with small groups of insurgents hardly constitute a major
>>battle. There has been no large scale (corps/army) maneuvering, since
>>the fall of Baghdad.
>
> So a virgin could walk the length and breadth of Iraq with her bosom
> full of gold, and none might raise a hand to her?

Women cannot do that in ANY Moslem country.Not if her bosom is exposed
enough for that gold to be seen.Virgin or not.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

Jim Yanik

May 26th 04, 12:54 AM

"Leslie Swartz" > wrote in
:

> Name me *one* territory on the surface of the entire planet that isn't
> "occupied land" from somebody's perspective.
>
> That whole "occupied lands" thing is a farce.
>
> The palestinians have their country/homeland. It's called Jordan.
>
> Steve Swartz
>
> "Tamas Feher" > wrote in message
> ...
>> >So Hamas isn't a bunch of terrorists. It's a militant group, or a
>> >so-called "terrorist" group.
>>
>> As long as Palestine and East Jerusalem is occupied, Hamas is free to
>> blow up whatever they want. Just like the WWII soviet partisans, Tito's
>> yugoslavian partisans, the french armed resistance or the anti-Quisling
>> norwegians did it. Trains, buses, automobiles, bridges and buildings,
>> anything israeli or Third Reich. It is their unalienable right to scare
>> the invaders off their occupied land. It is harder to do now, cause
>> palestinian do not receive any foreign supply comparable what Tito got
>> from the USA and USSR. They are practically fighting bare handed (AK-47
>> and homemade junk against heavy tanks).
>>
>> But be sure, Allah is patient, and arabs have time on their hands, like
>> sand in the desert. Years are like seconds for the almighty. Some time
>> the sons of Allah will regain their land.
>>
>> I think israelis should move to California and live there. They have
>> done so much harm and terror to the middle east in the last 55 years
>> (invasions, 200+ nuclear bombs, biological weapons of ethnically
>> selective mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, etc.) that you really
>> cannot expect arabs to live in peace with them ever. Damn it, jews they
>> still didn't pay the gov't of Lebanon for all the destruction they did
>> in those 22 years of occupation of the southern part of the country.
>>
>> Regards, Tamas Feher.
>>
>>
>
>
>

Supposedly,the WestBank was not "occupied territory" when Jordan ruled it
from 1948 to 1967. In actuality it was "disputed territory".It was never
formally assigned to be part of some proposed "Palestine",either.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

Scott MacEachern

May 26th 04, 01:04 AM

On Tue, 25 May 2004 11:30:47 -0500, Alan Minyard
> wrote:

>Being an apologist for Saddam and Al-Q is not the road to
>credibility.

Mr. Minyard, you're a living example of that 'rock-headed,
love-it-or-leave-it chauvinism' that I mentioned in another context on
this thread. How, exactly, does wanting to get to the bottom of this
event -- hell, for that matter doubting the official American accounts
of it -- make me an apologist for Saddam and/or al-Qaeda?

And quite right, I do read the news, pretty often in fact. IIRC, you
were one of the people vociferously objecting to the possibility that
those news reports from 18 months ago, talking about abuse of
prisoners by Americans, might be worth investigating...

Scott

Scott MacEachern

May 26th 04, 01:24 AM

On Tue, 25 May 2004 11:16:31 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
> wrote:

>Yeah, no doubt they were all fabricated before they were shown to the media
>folks at that press brief yesterday, right?

Nope. You were ascribing the fact that news agencies weren't carrying
those slides to the fact that such outlets would prefer to run
anti-American material, seditious beasts that they are. I'm merely
poiting out that the Pentagon didn't provide 'em with the transcripts.
Seditious beasts.

>Well, when they started shooting at US forces, they kind of crapped up the
>ol' "OK, everybody put your guns down and let's talk..." approach, now
>didn't they?

Problem is, they say that they weren't shooting...

>Your paraphrasing again leaves a lot out.

Not a whole lot. As I said, there's a bifg difference between an
insurgent hideout and a bunch of smugglers. And the insurgent
celebration (what is this, 50 Years of Jihad?) doesn't fit well with
the resr of it, either.

>Same source on the 24th: "These are the passports of Sudanese citizens that
>were involved in the raid." Note the use of plural "passports".

Quite right. My mistake.

>
>A medical examinationtable on the site. Syringes.
>> This is a 'pretty grand portable field medical set '? AKs and an
>> RPG.... in Iraq.
>
>Kimmittt: "More weapons, battery packs that we typically associate with
>those that are used for improvised explosive devices, a full-sized medical
>treatment bed for hasty operations in the field; top right, as we've showed
>before, the binoculars that had reticle patterns in them that one typically
>uses for adjusting artillery, adjusting mortar rounds."

Right. As I said, your 'pretty grand portable field medical set' is a
bed and some needles. And binoculars with reticles for adjusting
artillery? A few years ago, they were selling them for about $10 close
to the site of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.... they'r probably all over
Iraq. I like the quick correction, though: "Oops, the insurgents
aren't using artillery, better talk about mortars..."

>> > Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound like
>a
>> > viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?
>>
>> So are AKs. Are you going to declare open season on everyone in Iraq
>> who owns an AK, as well? A pistol... don't forget, there were some of
>> those found, too. Do you want to kill everyone in Iraq who owns a
>> pistol?
>
>RPG does not equal pistol. You need to get back to the basics of
>weaponeering--you obviously are having a bit of difficulty with basic
>concepts.

I think that it's best to leave that exchange in there, since it shows
how you tend to take a statement and then run way beyond teh bounds of
meaning with it.

>The jury is still out on that one, from what I have gathered.

Quite likely it is. But on nothing that Kimmitt says, eh? That is, a
priori, all true?

>Your continuing "damn the US at all costs" sentiments come through loud and
>clear, as usual. I guess the possibility of bad guys manipulating the media
>(not that it requires a great deal of manipulation in most cases) is to be
>discounted outright, too, eh? Gosh, some of the terrorist networks even have
>websites these days! Not to metion their other stalwart support sytems, like
>Al Jazeerah..and you?

Oh, dearie me, I'm a terrorist supporter because I don't believe that
everything Central Command says is golden? I'd expected better of you,
Mr Brooks, you're not usually that crude. One of the very best things
about the USA is that the country as a whole tends to be able to get
beyond this kind of stupid, dishonest smearing, where everyone who
doesn't agree with you-you-you is a terrorist. Your country is in
general a lot better than this, Mr Brooks.... quite a shame that you,
and some of the other net.kops on these groups, can't live up to it.

And no, I've thought of the possibility that this is an elaborate
hoax. It seems unlikely to me, for the same reason that the TWA800 and
similar hoaxes that bother these groups seem unlikely: it's too big,
too elaborate. Videos in the desert, faked burials, grieving widows...
If it turns out to be true, the USA in Iraq is in a lot of trouble,
'cause they are waaaayyyy ahead of you. But it's not impossible, I
quite agree.

Scott

John Mullen

May 26th 04, 07:43 AM

"Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
...
> John:
>
> 1) Leave your bogus ad hominem attacks for someone else; I don't buy them
> ("very young, indeed!"). The naive person is the one who believes that by
> casting dubious a[psersions on the character or nature of the person
> presenting hte argument, they have somehow "scored points" in the argument
> itself.
>
> 2) I never stated- I never implied- that lies/propaganda have no power.
> Go ahead and argue against that straw man if you like; once again, it also
> (see ad hominem above) says more about you as a person than the nature of
> your- or my- argument.
>
> 3) Add the straw man about "the whole war is faked" to the existing
> bonfire, will you?
>
> 4) And nice go of adding a couple of other gratuitous (and irrelevant, and
> reflective to your position) ad-hominem slanders and strawmen at the end
as
> well. You missed the obvious tin foil hat and trilateral commission ones
> though.
>
> O.K., so the crux of your argument is thus:
>
> "I believe the wedding story is true, therefore you must be a big doody
> head."
>
> O.K., if I guess that's all you can come up with we can move on . . .
>
> (note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and how
> the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
> mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab truth
> is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
> harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and
fits
> my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
> whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
> "true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely authentic-
no
> fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just
that
> what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the providers
> are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)

(snip)

> "John Mullen" > wrote in message
> . net...
> > "Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
> > ...
> > > Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real
> hard
> > > to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare
> > indeed.
> > >
> > > Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in
> question?
> > >
> > > Anything?
> >
> > For that matter, perhaps the whole war is being faked in Hollywood.
Maybe
> > none of it is real. Could you prove to me that it was?
> >
> > Your post marks you as very naive. Maybe you are very young. A hint:
wars
> > are not won or lost by the provability of facts. You may be thinking of
> > court cases?
> >
> > This incident, whether it really happened or not, has caused terrible
> (maybe
> > fatal?) damage to the continued US occupation of Iraq. FWIW I believe it
> > really was a wedding.
> >
> > John
> >
> > PS Do you think all the torture pics and video were also maybe faked?
How
> > about the moon landings...

Aw!

Sorry if I hurt your feelings!

You may not be as naive as I thought, as it seems you do sort-of understand
the point I was making. I don't buy the 'Arab truth' vs 'Western truth'
dichotomy though. Truth is truth. But in war, perception is reality.

Why are you so sure the wedding photos were faked? They look real enough to
me. Do you have inside information, or is it just your preconceived ideas
that guide you here?

Top-posting is a crime against Usenet!

Nice chatting to you too!

John

Presidente Alcazar

May 26th 04, 01:27 PM

On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian >
wrote:

>Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
>reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
>was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
>above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
>by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
>and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong?

Asymmetrical warfare requires asymmetrical media coverage.

The axiomatic assumptions that requires are firmly in place - notice
things like the relative coverage of weapons found in mosques in
Najaf, or the suicide bomber-belts discovered in Falluja, i.e. none.

This is a victim-culture bonanza, with the media shoe-horning
everthing into their pre-existing shorthand cliches of "Palestinian
intifada" and "Vietnam quagmire". We're in the land of hysteria and
hyperbole, with every Iraqi an innocent victim (even those
volley-firing rocket-propelled grenades from ambulances and
suicide-bombing the UN) and every American a brutal,
firepower-addicted oppressor.

>The Abu Ghraib thing was
>disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
>house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
>paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
>nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?

Actually, for once the US commanders deserve some credit for trying to
sort out something on the ground that came short of decisive military
action to conquer the town, with all the catastrophic political damage
that would have caused. On the other hand, the failure of the US
forces as a whole to grasp the importance of avoiding alienation of
the local population, no matter how irrational and prejudiced those
locals might be, is a real failure. Couple that to the idiotic
slackness about post-war planning, and the institutional arrogance
that "we don't do occupations" (well, you should have learned before
embarking upon the occupation of 25 million Iraqis...) and there are
plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism of the American approach.
But not as much as could reasonably sustain the mass of critical
reporting that actually surrounds their efforts.

>I don't know, but none of it looks good. And in that part of the world,
>as in many others, how you look can be as important as how you do.
>
>The wedding party.... well, if Iraqis in what is still something of a
>war zone will insist on their fireworks, they shouldn't be entirely
>surprised if the shooting is misinterpreted. Even so, clumsy is the
>best that can be said for the Good Guys.

Take a long, hard look at the stats of who is killing who, Alan. The
media perspective is "American military repression": the dead are
revealing that the real story is Iraqis killing each other. But they
generally don't meet the demands of media preconceptions, and so they
get airbrushed out of the picture.

Iraqis killing Iraqis? Quick, blame the Americans.

I've been staggered by the extent to which media coverage has simply
amounted to the media satisfying their own wihsful thinking, whether
al Jazeera acting as the mirror of Arab prejudices about the
intolerability of American violence against fundamentalist thugs and
the invisibility of Iraqi responsibility for anything that happens; or
British and American newspapers slavishly sucking up staged photos of
soldiers abusing or raping Iraqis. The Amnesty and ICRC reports are a
good case in point: try and compare the coverage of successful
reconstruction and aid efforts with the Abu Ghraib frenzy. Now, I'm
not arguing that one cancels out the other, but this does seem to be
the media position which can't address anything other than American
excesses and abuses to the exclusion of all else.

The last I heard was that civilian deaths in the past year were
estimated at 10,000, or 60,000 less than Saddam was believed to murder
on an average yearly basis according to the last HRO/NGO report I
read. That doesn't excuse Anglo-American errors and abuses, but it
does raise serious questions about the sense of proportion and moral
credibility of pundits who think that the current situation, bad as it
is, is similar or worse to what happened under Saddam.

Gavin Bailey

--

Now see message: "Boot sector corrupt. System halted. All data lost."
Spend thousands of dollar on top grade windows system. Result better
than expected. What your problem? - Bart Kwan En

Leslie Swartz

May 26th 04, 04:22 PM

Avoiding forcing everyone to slog through hundreds of lines of repeat . . .
Scott sez:

> And no, I've thought of the possibility that this is an elaborate
> hoax.

Scott, what is so elaborate about splicing x feet of wedding party footage
together with y feet of ululating widows/broken bodies of children/etc?
Both types of footage are readily available in that part of the world; you
can buy that footage wholesale. There are probably thousands of feet of
"happy wedding" and "crying women" video from that area- if not that
location- available to anyone interested in a quicjk set-up job. Nothing
had to be staged/faked/or even re-shot. The editing equipment is readily
available, and the propagandists are well trained (albeit unsophisticated).
The edits are aobviously "cut and paste" jobs.

The video is probably even "AUTHENTIC" in that sense. However, the "fakery"
involved is in the verbal claims ofhte person(s) supplying the video tot eh
media.

Are you saying that finding *one* unnamed person to lie about the
sourcing/circumstances of a piece of video constitutes an "elaborate hoax?"

No, Scott, in that part of the world, "faking" the "Wedding Party Massacre
Myth" is NOT an elaborate hoax at all.

More like SOP.

Steve Swartz

"Scott MacEachern" > wrote in message
...
> On Tue, 25 May 2004 11:16:31 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
> > wrote:
>
> >Yeah, no doubt they were all fabricated before they were shown to the
media
> >folks at that press brief yesterday, right?
>
> Nope. You were ascribing the fact that news agencies weren't carrying
> those slides to the fact that such outlets would prefer to run
> anti-American material, seditious beasts that they are. I'm merely
> poiting out that the Pentagon didn't provide 'em with the transcripts.
> Seditious beasts.
>
> >Well, when they started shooting at US forces, they kind of crapped up
the
> >ol' "OK, everybody put your guns down and let's talk..." approach, now
> >didn't they?
>
> Problem is, they say that they weren't shooting...
>
> >Your paraphrasing again leaves a lot out.
>
> Not a whole lot. As I said, there's a bifg difference between an
> insurgent hideout and a bunch of smugglers. And the insurgent
> celebration (what is this, 50 Years of Jihad?) doesn't fit well with
> the resr of it, either.
>
> >Same source on the 24th: "These are the passports of Sudanese citizens
that
> >were involved in the raid." Note the use of plural "passports".
>
> Quite right. My mistake.
>
> >
> >A medical examinationtable on the site. Syringes.
> >> This is a 'pretty grand portable field medical set '? AKs and an
> >> RPG.... in Iraq.
> >
> >Kimmittt: "More weapons, battery packs that we typically associate with
> >those that are used for improvised explosive devices, a full-sized
medical
> >treatment bed for hasty operations in the field; top right, as we've
showed
> >before, the binoculars that had reticle patterns in them that one
typically
> >uses for adjusting artillery, adjusting mortar rounds."
>
> Right. As I said, your 'pretty grand portable field medical set' is a
> bed and some needles. And binoculars with reticles for adjusting
> artillery? A few years ago, they were selling them for about $10 close
> to the site of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.... they'r probably all over
> Iraq. I like the quick correction, though: "Oops, the insurgents
> aren't using artillery, better talk about mortars..."
>
> >> > Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound
like
> >a
> >> > viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?
> >>
> >> So are AKs. Are you going to declare open season on everyone in Iraq
> >> who owns an AK, as well? A pistol... don't forget, there were some of
> >> those found, too. Do you want to kill everyone in Iraq who owns a
> >> pistol?
> >
> >RPG does not equal pistol. You need to get back to the basics of
> >weaponeering--you obviously are having a bit of difficulty with basic
> >concepts.
>
> I think that it's best to leave that exchange in there, since it shows
> how you tend to take a statement and then run way beyond teh bounds of
> meaning with it.
>
> >The jury is still out on that one, from what I have gathered.
>
> Quite likely it is. But on nothing that Kimmitt says, eh? That is, a
> priori, all true?
>
> >Your continuing "damn the US at all costs" sentiments come through loud
and
> >clear, as usual. I guess the possibility of bad guys manipulating the
media
> >(not that it requires a great deal of manipulation in most cases) is to
be
> >discounted outright, too, eh? Gosh, some of the terrorist networks even
have
> >websites these days! Not to metion their other stalwart support sytems,
like
> >Al Jazeerah..and you?
>
> Oh, dearie me, I'm a terrorist supporter because I don't believe that
> everything Central Command says is golden? I'd expected better of you,
> Mr Brooks, you're not usually that crude. One of the very best things
> about the USA is that the country as a whole tends to be able to get
> beyond this kind of stupid, dishonest smearing, where everyone who
> doesn't agree with you-you-you is a terrorist. Your country is in
> general a lot better than this, Mr Brooks.... quite a shame that you,
> and some of the other net.kops on these groups, can't live up to it.
>
> And no, I've thought of the possibility that this is an elaborate
> hoax. It seems unlikely to me, for the same reason that the TWA800 and
> similar hoaxes that bother these groups seem unlikely: it's too big,
> too elaborate. Videos in the desert, faked burials, grieving widows...
> If it turns out to be true, the USA in Iraq is in a lot of trouble,
> 'cause they are waaaayyyy ahead of you. But it's not impossible, I
> quite agree.
>
> Scott
>
>

Jeffrey Smidt

May 26th 04, 04:40 PM

"John Mullen" > wrote in message >...
> "Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real hard
> > to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare
> indeed.
> >
> > Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in question?
> >
> > Anything?
>
> For that matter, perhaps the whole war is being faked in Hollywood. Maybe
> none of it is real. Could you prove to me that it was?
>
> Your post marks you as very naive. Maybe you are very young. A hint: wars
> are not won or lost by the provability of facts. You may be thinking of
> court cases?
>
> This incident, whether it really happened or not, has caused terrible (maybe
> fatal?) damage to the continued US occupation of Iraq. FWIW I believe it
> really was a wedding.
>
> John
>
> PS Do you think all the torture pics and video were also maybe faked? How
> about the moon landings...

Actually, it turns out a fair number of the pictures were faked it
turns out, pictures of GI's raping Iraqi women apparently came from a
Hungarian porno sight and a number of the Brit accusations appear to
be faked also.

So far, I havent seen only a few torture pictures, though Ive seen a
number of harassing and embarassing pictures, with some soldier
definately acting inappriately.

Eliminate SPAM

May 26th 04, 09:12 PM

John Mullen wrote:
> "Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
>>(note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and how
>>the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
>>mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab truth
>>is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
>>harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and fits
>>my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
>>whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
>>"true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely authentic-no
>>fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just that
>>what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the providers
>>are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)
>
> You may not be as naive as I thought, as it seems you do sort-of understand
> the point I was making. I don't buy the 'Arab truth' vs 'Western truth'
> dichotomy though. Truth is truth. But in war, perception is reality.
>
> John

John -

I suggest you become more informed on cultural differences worldwide.
There are many ways worldwide of defining 'truth'; many do not depend on
reason and evidence. Mr. Swartz's observation on "Arab Truth" vs.
"Western Truth" is very close to the mark.

I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I have
used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
don't have an 'Iraq' section):
"Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
thinking."

Care to apologize to Mr. Swartz?

Scott MacEachern

May 26th 04, 09:48 PM

On Wed, 26 May 2004 11:22:52 -0400, "Leslie Swartz"
> wrote:

>Scott, what is so elaborate about splicing x feet of wedding party footage
>together with y feet of ululating widows/broken bodies of children/etc?

Splicing video? Nothing, in and of itself -- as you say, film is easy.
It's the combination of film and witnesses that would be hard to fake.
Finding different people, including eyewitnesses, in Makr al-Deeb,
Ramadi and Baghdad who say that there was a wedding going on there,
that specific people were at that wedding, that events on the video
reflect that, that the people who were killed were not insurgents,
that women and children were killed? Is the woman who says that her
children were killed there lying? The widow of the wedding singer in
Baghdad? The local chief?

At this point, interviews have been carried out in those various
places with a whole variety of different people, by AP, the New York
Times, al-Arabiya, Reuters and AFP _at least_... there may well be
other agencies involved, but I have seen reports from those agencies
in which reporters talked to folks themselves.

Not just one community, not just one family. Everyone from shepherds
to the widow of a moderately well-known Iraqi entertainer. Putting
that together with the video makes the idea that the whole thing is a
big hoax considerably harder to believe, in my opinion.

>Are you saying that finding *one* unnamed person to lie about the
>sourcing/circumstances of a piece of video constitutes an "elaborate hoax?"

Nope. But finding a whole bunch of them to do so about the event as a
whole certainly qualifies as an (over-) elaborate hoax. The video
itself is only part of it.

Scott

www.PokerCalifornia.com

May 26th 04, 10:13 PM

Ppropaganda works.

John Mullen

May 26th 04, 10:16 PM

"Eliminate SPAM" > wrote in message
...
> John Mullen wrote:
> > "Leslie Swartz" > wrote in message
> >>(note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and
how
> >>the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
> >>mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab
truth
> >>is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
> >>harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and
fits
> >>my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
> >>whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
> >>"true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely
authentic-no
> >>fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just
that
> >>what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the
providers
> >>are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)
> >
> > You may not be as naive as I thought, as it seems you do sort-of
understand
> > the point I was making. I don't buy the 'Arab truth' vs 'Western truth'
> > dichotomy though. Truth is truth. But in war, perception is reality.
> >
> > John
>
>
> John -
>
> I suggest you become more informed on cultural differences worldwide.
> There are many ways worldwide of defining 'truth'; many do not depend on
> reason and evidence. Mr. Swartz's observation on "Arab Truth" vs.
> "Western Truth" is very close to the mark.

I beg to differ.

I've travelled and lived in different parts of the world and found that most
people are pretty much the same. Scottish jerks, Scots who are ok. French
jerks, French people who are ok. African jerks, Africans who are ok. USA,
Germany, Spain... Ad infinitum. Decent people outnumber jerks about 75-25 I
would say, pretty much everywhere you go.

I've also studied human developmental psychology. Children of all cultures
understand 'truth' as a concept very early on, round about the time they
learn how to lie! Only people with certain mental disorders are exempt from
this knowledge. It certainly isn't restricted to any one race or religion!

Trouble is, we also get very good at convincing ourselves of what we want to
believe...

> I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I have
> used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
> Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
> customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
> styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
> don't have an 'Iraq' section):
> "Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
> not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
> ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
> feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
> thinking."

Nice.

I think you will find that all humans' behaviour is shaped by their moral
world view and their immediate feelings more than by 'objective facts'. Not
just people of the Islamic faith or Arabs.

It would be interesting to see if there are any books in Arabic about how to
deal with the irrational Western infidels! They must exist...

> Care to apologize to Mr. Swartz?
>

No. What for?

John

John Mullen

May 26th 04, 11:25 PM

"www.PokerCalifornia.com" > wrote in message
om...
> Ppropaganda works.

It certainly does.

J

Michael P. Reed

May 27th 04, 03:59 AM

In message >, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
> In message >, Michael P. Reed
> > writes
> >In message >, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
> >> It's not a "war zone"
> >
> >??????
>
> Many keep saying so.
> >
> >> - major combat operations ended last year.
> >
> >ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it appears as
> >things are judged "over there." A few companies skirmishing with small
> groups
> >of insurgents hardly constitute a major battle. There has been no large
> scale
> >(corps/army) maneuvering, since the fall of Baghdad.
>
> So a virgin could walk the length and breadth of Iraq with her bosom
> full of gold, and none might raise a hand to her?

You need to build brick houses if you do not want the Big Bad Wolf to blow it
down.

> >> What, was he wrong or something? Isn't anyone going to tell him?
> >
> >For "he" you should have written "I," and, yes, you are, or are you
> attempting
> >to sell the notion that guerilla war is not war, therefore, a "warzone"
> cannot
> >exist?
>
> I'm not the one trying to claim that Iraq is a peaceful haven of
> tranquility with just the last handful of insurgents to be winkled
> out...

Who has tried to claim that? Not anyone that I have read. Insurgent activity
ebbs and flows. After their conventional defeat, it took time to reorganize
and reconstitute and after a couple of months insurgent attacks rose, then
after suffering casualties and captures, it fell (as after Sadaam's capture).
It rose in Falujah, and fell again, and will probably fall through the summer
only to rebound prior to the elections (in this, it is eerily similar to the
Philippines in 1900). In the end, however, the crescendos of violence will
lessen as time passes (that is, of course, if the "occupying power" is
winning). We'll have to wait and see. Personally, I think the
guerrilla/terrorists blew it big time in Falujah, Al Sadr is doing now, by
concentrating too much, and so allowing them to be much more easily (and
conveniently) killed. An embarrassment to the U.S. and Coalition, yes, but I'd
rather be embarrassed than dead. One thing about guerrilla wars is that one
does not always know one is winning until the fighting is over. It is too
gradual. One may argue that McKinley's victory in the 1900 election was the
straw that broke the camel's back during the Philippine Insurrection (Because
Aguinaldo and the insurrectionists were depending heavily on the "anti-war"
William Jennings Bryan's victory, but the nastiest fighting (Samar and
Batangas) still lay ahead, and the war wouldn't end for another year and a
half.

> >You have really stretched some of your arguing points beyond the point
> >of credulity of late.
>
> Why? I'm just asking for some consistency. One minute it's a successful
> and mostly peaceful occupation: the next, it's a furious insurgency with
> guerillas behind every rock.

I have not seen those claims made.

> I'm willing to believe one, or the other, but not both at the same time.

Then you need to enlarge your imagination. <g> It is indeed both only not
everywhere. The pacification process is underway, but by no means complete
(obviously). Some places being more dangerous than others. That is the way of
guerilla wars, especially those seeing insurgent actions after a conventional
defeat. The Southern states in the American Revolution, France 1870, South
Africa 1899-1901, and the Philippines 1899-1902 all refer.

--
Regards,

Michael P. Reed

Alan Lothian

May 27th 04, 09:42 AM

In article >, Presidente
Alcazar > wrote:

> On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian >
> wrote:
>
> >Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
> >reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
> >was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
> >above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
> >by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
> >and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong?
>
> Asymmetrical warfare requires asymmetrical media coverage.

Well, we certainly have that, as you go on to point out. My own belief
is that television journalism, even under far more rigorous editorial
regimes than we see today, is *inherently* dishonest. A good moving
image can *steal* a thousand words. That there is real and active
dishonesty out there just makes things worse.

I very much fear, Gavin, that there's going to be a lot of tiresome
agreement in what follows.

<snippaggio>

> This is a victim-culture bonanza, with the media shoe-horning
> everthing into their pre-existing shorthand cliches of "Palestinian
> intifada" and "Vietnam quagmire". We're in the land of hysteria and
> hyperbole, with every Iraqi an innocent victim (even those
> volley-firing rocket-propelled grenades from ambulances and
> suicide-bombing the UN) and every American a brutal,
> firepower-addicted oppressor.

And Looniemouth Flakjacket, wearing a Shirt of Many Pockets, reporting
from just outside a booze-filled hotel "near the front". Looniemouth
Flakjacketess is even worse.

> >The Abu Ghraib thing was
> >disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
> >house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
> >paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
> >nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?
>
> Actually, for once the US commanders deserve some credit for trying to
> sort out something on the ground that came short of decisive military
> action to conquer the town, with all the catastrophic political damage
> that would have caused. On the other hand, the failure of the US
> forces as a whole to grasp the importance of avoiding alienation of
> the local population,

And this is where I find myself worrying rather more seriously than
about irresponsible and often downright lying meeja hype. I also worry
(private sources) about gunship attacks on radar-tracked mortar-launch
sites in Baghdad, to name but one.

And I worry a lot about the sort of stuff that notorious pinko leftie
loonie TMO picked up on here a week or two ago; small numbers of combat
troops with the obligation to defend a huge logistics tail, and
shamelessly competing agencies trying to control the whole ****aree.

> no matter how irrational and prejudiced those
> locals might be, is a real failure. Couple that to the idiotic
> slackness about post-war planning,

Quite.

> and the institutional arrogance
> that "we don't do occupations" (well, you should have learned before
> embarking upon the occupation of 25 million Iraqis...) and there are
> plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism of the American approach.
> But not as much as could reasonably sustain the mass of critical
> reporting that actually surrounds their efforts.

Quite squared.

<snip>
>
> Take a long, hard look at the stats of who is killing who, Alan. The
> media perspective is "American military repression": the dead are
> revealing that the real story is Iraqis killing each other. But they
> generally don't meet the demands of media preconceptions, and so they
> get airbrushed out of the picture.
>
> Iraqis killing Iraqis? Quick, blame the Americans.

Sure, but perhaps more to the point: US forces in Iraq, that is, combat
troops (in fact I think the figures work if you include every
hamburger-tosser and supply-truck driver) compared with the population
are far, far fewer than the British Army in NI. And we all know how
problem-free that game was.

> I've been staggered by the extent to which media coverage has simply
> amounted to the media satisfying their own wihsful thinking, whether
> al Jazeera acting as the mirror of Arab prejudices about the
> intolerability of American violence against fundamentalist thugs and
> the invisibility of Iraqi responsibility for anything that happens; or
> British and American newspapers slavishly sucking up staged photos of
> soldiers abusing or raping Iraqis.

A very real problem in both the US and the UK is the lack of not only
politicos but also journalists with any military experience or indeed
any willingness to learn. Compare and contrast the nasty stories that
came out of the Korean war, with the nonsenses we see now. Consider
(just one among many possible examples) the meeja's idea of "heavy
fighting".

> The Amnesty and ICRC reports are a
> good case in point: try and compare the coverage of successful
> reconstruction and aid efforts with the Abu Ghraib frenzy. Now, I'm
> not arguing that one cancels out the other, but this does seem to be
> the media position which can't address anything other than American
> excesses and abuses to the exclusion of all else.

I happen to know (private sources, but there are plenty public ones if
you look around; and you certainly do have to look around, which makes
your point) that a lot of good people are actually out there trying to
reconstruct the **** out of the place, but the "abuses and excesses"
are not all meeja imagination. The importation of all manner of neo-sub
Schwarznegger "security consultants" being just one example. You really
don't need guys with major dick problems walking around with
fluorescent "Shoot Me!" signs on their foreheads.
More important, there does seem to be a lack of what might be called
grip, which undoubtedly reflects TMO's point about competing agencies.
In that sense, at least, there are Vietnam resonances.

But not otherwise. This thing simply cannot fail; the consequences
would be utterly appalling, and I wish gloating meejists would realise
it. But they're careerists, wannabee celebs. You can't expect much from
someone whose idea of integrity is a fully-functioning gold Amex card.

> The last I heard was that civilian deaths in the past year were
> estimated at 10,000, or 60,000 less than Saddam was believed to murder
> on an average yearly basis according to the last HRO/NGO report I
> read. That doesn't excuse Anglo-American errors and abuses, but it
> does raise serious questions about the sense of proportion and moral
> credibility of pundits who think that the current situation, bad as it
> is, is similar or worse to what happened under Saddam.

Quite cubed.

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" Ibn Khaldun

My .mac.com address is a spam sink.
If you wish to email me, try atlothian at blueyonder dot co dot uk

Steven James Forsberg

May 27th 04, 12:21 PM

:> I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I have
:> used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
:> Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
:> customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
:> styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
:> don't have an 'Iraq' section):
:> "Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
:> not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
:> ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
:> feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
:> thinking."

Of course the term "cognitive dissonance" was originally used to
describe behaviors manifested by "modern/western" people, but it certainly
has its place in many if not all cultures.
The above says that "objective facts" are overruled by the Saudis
"faith" and that "truth" is subjective. Funny, I'd swear that there are a
lot of fervent Christains out there who are just the same way...

regards,
--------------------------------------------------

Jack Linthicum

May 27th 04, 03:18 PM

Alan Lothian > wrote in message >...
> In article >, Presidente
> Alcazar > wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian >
> > wrote:
> >
> > >Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
> > >reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
> > >was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
> > >above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
> > >by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
> > >and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong?
> >
> > Asymmetrical warfare requires asymmetrical media coverage.
>
> Well, we certainly have that, as you go on to point out. My own belief
> is that television journalism, even under far more rigorous editorial
> regimes than we see today, is *inherently* dishonest. A good moving
> image can *steal* a thousand words. That there is real and active
> dishonesty out there just makes things worse.
>
> I very much fear, Gavin, that there's going to be a lot of tiresome
> agreement in what follows.
>
>
> <snippaggio>
>
> > This is a victim-culture bonanza, with the media shoe-horning
> > everthing into their pre-existing shorthand cliches of "Palestinian
> > intifada" and "Vietnam quagmire". We're in the land of hysteria and
> > hyperbole, with every Iraqi an innocent victim (even those
> > volley-firing rocket-propelled grenades from ambulances and
> > suicide-bombing the UN) and every American a brutal,
> > firepower-addicted oppressor.
>
> And Looniemouth Flakjacket, wearing a Shirt of Many Pockets, reporting
> from just outside a booze-filled hotel "near the front". Looniemouth
> Flakjacketess is even worse.
>
> > >The Abu Ghraib thing was
> > >disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
> > >house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
> > >paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
> > >nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?
> >
> > Actually, for once the US commanders deserve some credit for trying to
> > sort out something on the ground that came short of decisive military
> > action to conquer the town, with all the catastrophic political damage
> > that would have caused. On the other hand, the failure of the US
> > forces as a whole to grasp the importance of avoiding alienation of
> > the local population,
>
> And this is where I find myself worrying rather more seriously than
> about irresponsible and often downright lying meeja hype. I also worry
> (private sources) about gunship attacks on radar-tracked mortar-launch
> sites in Baghdad, to name but one.
>
> And I worry a lot about the sort of stuff that notorious pinko leftie
> loonie TMO picked up on here a week or two ago; small numbers of combat
> troops with the obligation to defend a huge logistics tail, and
> shamelessly competing agencies trying to control the whole ****aree.
>
>
> > no matter how irrational and prejudiced those
> > locals might be, is a real failure. Couple that to the idiotic
> > slackness about post-war planning,
>
> Quite.
>
> > and the institutional arrogance
> > that "we don't do occupations" (well, you should have learned before
> > embarking upon the occupation of 25 million Iraqis...) and there are
> > plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism of the American approach.
> > But not as much as could reasonably sustain the mass of critical
> > reporting that actually surrounds their efforts.
>
> Quite squared.
>
> <snip>
> >
> > Take a long, hard look at the stats of who is killing who, Alan. The
> > media perspective is "American military repression": the dead are
> > revealing that the real story is Iraqis killing each other. But they
> > generally don't meet the demands of media preconceptions, and so they
> > get airbrushed out of the picture.
> >
> > Iraqis killing Iraqis? Quick, blame the Americans.
>
> Sure, but perhaps more to the point: US forces in Iraq, that is, combat
> troops (in fact I think the figures work if you include every
> hamburger-tosser and supply-truck driver) compared with the population
> are far, far fewer than the British Army in NI. And we all know how
> problem-free that game was.
>
> > I've been staggered by the extent to which media coverage has simply
> > amounted to the media satisfying their own wihsful thinking, whether
> > al Jazeera acting as the mirror of Arab prejudices about the
> > intolerability of American violence against fundamentalist thugs and
> > the invisibility of Iraqi responsibility for anything that happens; or
> > British and American newspapers slavishly sucking up staged photos of
> > soldiers abusing or raping Iraqis.
>
> A very real problem in both the US and the UK is the lack of not only
> politicos but also journalists with any military experience or indeed
> any willingness to learn. Compare and contrast the nasty stories that
> came out of the Korean war, with the nonsenses we see now. Consider
> (just one among many possible examples) the meeja's idea of "heavy
> fighting".
>
>
> > The Amnesty and ICRC reports are a
> > good case in point: try and compare the coverage of successful
> > reconstruction and aid efforts with the Abu Ghraib frenzy. Now, I'm
> > not arguing that one cancels out the other, but this does seem to be
> > the media position which can't address anything other than American
> > excesses and abuses to the exclusion of all else.
>
> I happen to know (private sources, but there are plenty public ones if
> you look around; and you certainly do have to look around, which makes
> your point) that a lot of good people are actually out there trying to
> reconstruct the **** out of the place, but the "abuses and excesses"
> are not all meeja imagination. The importation of all manner of neo-sub
> Schwarznegger "security consultants" being just one example. You really
> don't need guys with major dick problems walking around with
> fluorescent "Shoot Me!" signs on their foreheads.
> More important, there does seem to be a lack of what might be called
> grip, which undoubtedly reflects TMO's point about competing agencies.
> In that sense, at least, there are Vietnam resonances.
>
> But not otherwise. This thing simply cannot fail; the consequences
> would be utterly appalling, and I wish gloating meejists would realise
> it. But they're careerists, wannabee celebs. You can't expect much from
> someone whose idea of integrity is a fully-functioning gold Amex card.
>
> > The last I heard was that civilian deaths in the past year were
> > estimated at 10,000, or 60,000 less than Saddam was believed to murder
> > on an average yearly basis according to the last HRO/NGO report I
> > read. That doesn't excuse Anglo-American errors and abuses, but it
> > does raise serious questions about the sense of proportion and moral
> > credibility of pundits who think that the current situation, bad as it
> > is, is similar or worse to what happened under Saddam.
>
> Quite cubed.

Re: competing agencies, the US Department of Justice has opened up a
potential battleground with the Department of Homeland Security by
means of the weapon of choice, Television. Yesterday the Attorney
General flanked by one tall and one short bozo proceeded to announce
the need to find seven people who have been known as al Qaeda members
since at least 1998. They may or may not be in the US, one commentator
on this morning's TV said he saw at least 12 of them while coming to
work in New York. "Nation in peril" is a a good rallying cry if you
have nothing more to offer, warmed over stale news fills the 24-7
schedule as well anything of value.

George Z. Bush

May 27th 04, 04:02 PM

Jack Linthicum wrote:
> Alan Lothian > wrote in message
> >...
>> In article >, Presidente
>> Alcazar > wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian >
>>> wrote:

(Snip)

> Re: competing agencies, the US Department of Justice has opened up a
> potential battleground with the Department of Homeland Security by
> means of the weapon of choice, Television. Yesterday the Attorney
> General flanked by one tall and one short bozo proceeded to announce
> the need to find seven people who have been known as al Qaeda members
> since at least 1998. They may or may not be in the US, one commentator
> on this morning's TV said he saw at least 12 of them while coming to
> work in New York. "Nation in peril" is a a good rallying cry if you
> have nothing more to offer, warmed over stale news fills the 24-7
> schedule as well anything of value.

The short bozo was the Director of the FBI. I couldn't identify the tall
bozo....could you?
(^-^)))

George Z.

Jack Linthicum

May 27th 04, 05:19 PM

Chad Irby > wrote in message >...
> In article >,
> "Tamas Feher" > wrote:
>
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm
> >
> > Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
> > recovered.
> > +
> > Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
> > guy who filmed the home video above.
>
> Well, the video shown on the BBC shows *a* party or wedding. It could
> have been shot at any time over the last year or more, as far as that
> goes.
>
> > BBC is the remorse of the world!
>
> They're certainly a reason for remorse in the UK. The BBC used to be
> pretty good, until they let their new coverage quality slide so much.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5239376

You certainly have to admire the 9 members of the band who died after
the video was shot and the tenth who lived to verify their presence.
That's sacrifice. Literally.

"Basem Ishab Mohamed, the drummer, identified the organist as Mohaned,
brother of a noted Baghdad wedding singer Hussein al-Ali, who also
performed at the wedding. Both were killed when U.S. aircraft struck
in the early hours of Wednesday, he said. " from the cite above

news

May 27th 04, 09:14 PM

"Aardvark J. Bandersnatch, MP" > wrote in message
news:OWHsc.111526$536.20269032@attbi_s03...

I think Arabs should be pressed up aginst the Red Sea... It their Allah
Splits it they live, if he dosn't well it is Ahllah's will and the arabs
take a long swim...

After all the Arabs have done so much harm and terror to the world in the
last 600 years (invasions,
bombs, biological weapons, ethnic cleansing, fratricide, regicide,
matricide, suicide, genocide, etc.) that you really cannot expect arabs to
live in peace with anyone ever. so might as well just get rid of the
verman.

Jack Linthicum

May 28th 04, 01:13 PM

"George Z. Bush" > wrote in message >...
> Jack Linthicum wrote:
> > Alan Lothian > wrote in message
> > >...
> >> In article >, Presidente
> >> Alcazar > wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian >
> >>> wrote:
>
> (Snip)
>
> > Re: competing agencies, the US Department of Justice has opened up a
> > potential battleground with the Department of Homeland Security by
> > means of the weapon of choice, Television. Yesterday the Attorney
> > General flanked by one tall and one short bozo proceeded to announce
> > the need to find seven people who have been known as al Qaeda members
> > since at least 1998. They may or may not be in the US, one commentator
> > on this morning's TV said he saw at least 12 of them while coming to
> > work in New York. "Nation in peril" is a a good rallying cry if you
> > have nothing more to offer, warmed over stale news fills the 24-7
> > schedule as well anything of value.
>
> The short bozo was the Director of the FBI. I couldn't identify the tall
> bozo....could you?
> (^-^)))
>
>

No, and neither does the FBI site. I would presume it is either Karl
Rove's watchdog to make certain that the new offensive on terror, as
opposed to the mess in potamia, gets its creds or, possibly, the
center for the Director's Office basketball team being shown as an
actual employee and not some ringer brought in to play.

George Z. Bush

May 28th 04, 01:25 PM

Jack Linthicum wrote:
> "George Z. Bush" > wrote in message
> >...
>> Jack Linthicum wrote:
>>> Alan Lothian > wrote in message
>>> >...
>>>> In article >, Presidente
>>>> Alcazar > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian >
>>>>> wrote:
>>
>> (Snip)
>>
>>> Re: competing agencies, the US Department of Justice has opened up a
>>> potential battleground with the Department of Homeland Security by
>>> means of the weapon of choice, Television. Yesterday the Attorney
>>> General flanked by one tall and one short bozo proceeded to announce
>>> the need to find seven people who have been known as al Qaeda members
>>> since at least 1998. They may or may not be in the US, one commentator
>>> on this morning's TV said he saw at least 12 of them while coming to
>>> work in New York. "Nation in peril" is a a good rallying cry if you
>>> have nothing more to offer, warmed over stale news fills the 24-7
>>> schedule as well anything of value.
>>
>> The short bozo was the Director of the FBI. I couldn't identify the tall
>> bozo....could you?
>> (^-^)))
>>
>>
>
> No, and neither does the FBI site. I would presume it is either Karl
> Rove's watchdog to make certain that the new offensive on terror, as
> opposed to the mess in potamia, gets its creds or, possibly, the
> center for the Director's Office basketball team being shown as an
> actual employee and not some ringer brought in to play.

You know, you'd have thought that he might have recognized that, for all of his
warnings about us being a target of AQ again, some of us would conclude that he
was admitting that his leadership hadn't accomplished much of anything in their
war against terrorism by squandering our assets in Iraq.

George Z.

John Mullen

May 28th 04, 04:37 PM

"Steven James Forsberg" > wrote in message
...
> :> I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I
have
> :> used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
> :> Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
> :> customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
> :> styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
> :> don't have an 'Iraq' section):
> :> "Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
> :> not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
> :> ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
> :> feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
> :> thinking."
>
> Of course the term "cognitive dissonance" was originally used to
> describe behaviors manifested by "modern/western" people, but it certainly
> has its place in many if not all cultures.
> The above says that "objective facts" are overruled by the Saudis
> "faith" and that "truth" is subjective. Funny, I'd swear that there are a
> lot of fervent Christains out there who are just the same way...

Exactly. Current events must surely underline this if anyone was ever in any
doubt!

John

Paul J. Adam

May 28th 04, 08:47 PM

In message >, Michael P.
Reed > writes
>In message >, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
>> So a virgin could walk the length and breadth of Iraq with her bosom
>> full of gold, and none might raise a hand to her?
>
>You need to build brick houses if you do not want the Big Bad Wolf to blow it
>down.

It's complicated when you're fighting the Big Bad Wolf and building
houses for the Friendly Wolf - and trying to tell one from the other.
(Separating sheep and goats is simple by comparison)

>> I'm not the one trying to claim that Iraq is a peaceful haven of
>> tranquility with just the last handful of insurgents to be winkled
>> out...
>
>Who has tried to claim that? Not anyone that I have read.

Victory has been imminent for quite some time, apparently...

>Insurgent activity
>ebbs and flows. After their conventional defeat, it took time to reorganize
>and reconstitute and after a couple of months insurgent attacks rose, then
>after suffering casualties and captures, it fell (as after Sadaam's capture).
>It rose in Falujah, and fell again, and will probably fall through the summer
>only to rebound prior to the elections (in this, it is eerily similar to the
>Philippines in 1900). In the end, however, the crescendos of violence will
>lessen as time passes (that is, of course, if the "occupying power" is
>winning). We'll have to wait and see.

I agree with all of the above, actually. I'm concerned about excessive
and premature triumphalism - not convinced of doom.

(Failure remains thoroughly possible, but so is a successful outcome. As
you say, time will tell)

>Personally, I think the
>guerrilla/terrorists blew it big time in Falujah, Al Sadr is doing now, by
>concentrating too much, and so allowing them to be much more easily (and
>conveniently) killed. An embarrassment to the U.S. and Coalition, yes, but I'd
>rather be embarrassed than dead. One thing about guerrilla wars is that one
>does not always know one is winning until the fighting is over. It is too
>gradual. One may argue that McKinley's victory in the 1900 election was the
>straw that broke the camel's back during the Philippine Insurrection (Because
>Aguinaldo and the insurrectionists were depending heavily on the "anti-war"
>William Jennings Bryan's victory, but the nastiest fighting (Samar and
>Batangas) still lay ahead, and the war wouldn't end for another year and a
>half.

I've left the above unsnipped because, again, it's a valid point.

>> Why? I'm just asking for some consistency. One minute it's a successful
>> and mostly peaceful occupation: the next, it's a furious insurgency with
>> guerillas behind every rock.
>
>I have not seen those claims made.

I have. (Remember, this is Usenet: cynically, you can find anything
claimed if you read long enough)

>> I'm willing to believe one, or the other, but not both at the same time.
>
>Then you need to enlarge your imagination. <g> It is indeed both only not
>everywhere.

That's true enough. I gather the Kurdish north is going pretty well: the
south was doing fairly well but has recently started slipping: and the
US had some of the hotbeds which have not gone as well as desired.
(Because the US mishandled them? Or because the US had many of the hard
cases to deal with?)

Perhaps I just prefer to be cautiously pessimistic - and to express
doubts about some parts of the plan.

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk