Nuclear KnuckleBall in the LoC
Filed Under Just Plain War, Musings | Leave a Comment
Wikipedia: knuckleball
A knuckleball (or “knuckler” for short) is a baseball pitch with an erratic, unpredictable motion.
The pitch is thrown so as to minimize the spin of the ball in flight. This causes vortices over the stitched seams of the baseball during its trajectory, which can cause the pitch to change direction, including corkscrew, mid-flight.
This makes the pitch difficult for batters to hit, but also difficult for pitchers to control. The challenge also extends to the catcher — who must at least attempt to catch the pitch — and the umpire, who must determine whether the pitch was a strike or ball.
The pitcher is current affairs already-tainted with nuclear waste.
And the batter is everybody on the planet.
The catcher and the umpire?
Multi-bodies guess.
India and Pakistan have never been the best of neighbors, even at the best of times.
And now this on Tuesday from the Christian Science Monitor:
- A series of deadly skirmishes along the India-Pakistan border are endangering the official cease-fire between the two nations, increasing tensions already sparked by a lethal series of terrorist bombings in India last weekend.
The Hindu newspaper reports that Indian military along the Line of Control (LoC), the border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, claimed that they were shelled by Pakistani forces on Wednesday, though no one was injured.
…
The Telegraph of Calcutta writes that the shelling, the latest in a string of attacks that began earlier this week, has increased pressure on India to respond to Pakistan in kind. Pakistan is also accused of involvement in a series of bombings last weekend in the western city of Ahmedabad.
This entire area — a kind of DMZ — along the above-mentioned LoC has seen all kinds of bloody shit between India and Pakistan since 1947, when they cut loose from the-then defunct UK Empire.
Both sides claim all of Kashmir.
India and Pakistan have been under a cease-fire agreement since 2003 and reportedly gradually been renewing diplomatic ties.
But not really.
According to the CSM piece, on Monday an Indian soldier was killed when some Pakistani GIs crossed over this LoC and got into a verbal disagreement with Indian troops.
India says Pakistan has violated the 2003 cease-fire 20 times without some kind of Indian retaliation.
Although these two nations seem to hate each other and are grappling about all the time, the really big difference here is “the bomb.”
And as just as India and the US is about to finalize a nuclear agreement, Pakistan has popped up wanting the same atomic deal.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has been Washington this week meeting with Decider George, but instead of any niceties, it was an ass chewing.
First, Decider George was annoyed with Gilani about Pakistan’s security apparatus, the dreaded and notorious ISI — Inter Services Intelligence — and how the organization was leaking intell to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, all kinds of other insurgent and nasty groups.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar, who was with Gilani, siphoned out some leaks of his own.
From the Australian News:
- Providing details of the tense White House encounter that seems certain to further inflame relations between Islamabad and Washington, Mr Mukhtar said Mr Bush was aware of the “fiasco” surrounding the new Pakistani government’s abortive attempt to assert control over the spy agency.
Pakistan has persistently argued it cannot take effective action against al-Qa’ida and the Taliban unless the US shares with it “actionable intelligence”.
But according to Mr Mukhtar, Mr Bush told the Pakistani Prime Minister that this could not be provided “because certain elements of the ISI are leaking information to the terrorists before they could be hit by the US or Pakistani forces”.
A senior diplomat in Islamabad said yesterday the US president’s comments reinforced what was known to be true.
“Now you have it. No less than the President of the United States saying what we all know, namely, that the ISI is as leaky as a sieve and that its links with the jihadists are such that anything we discuss with them goes straight to al-Qa’ida & co.”
And on the nuclear issue?
No. Negative. Never.
Despite what PM Gilani desires:
- There should be no discrimination. If they want to give such nuclear status to India, we expect the same for Pakistan,” Gilani said in a conversation with Richard N Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, at a meeting jointly organised with the Middle East Institute.
Gilani — who responded to a number of questions from the audience — spoke at length on a variety of issues including terrorism and extremism, Pak-US relations, the economy and the scope of democracy in the country.
According to the Press Trust of India, the US retorted:
- Nicholas Burns, one of the architects of the the Indo-US nuclear deal, feels that Pakistan cannot expect a similar pact, a day after its Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani openly demanded from the US such a deal.
Burns also pressed for the speedy approval of the nuke deal ahead of the IAEA taking up the India-specific safeguards pact tomorrow for approval saying it was “good” for both the countries besides helping strengthen the non-proliferation regime.
…
“India’s trust, its credibility, the fact that it has promised to create a state-of-the art facility, monitored by the IAEA, to begin a new export control regime in place, because it has not proliferated the nuclear technology, we can’t say that about Pakistan.” said Burns when asked whether the US will offer a nuclear deal with Pakistan on the lines of the Indo-US nuke deal during a panel debate on nuclear agreement at the Brookings Institution.
Neither India or Pakistan will back off each other.
The serious threat here is nuclear.
The two countries have waged three, full-scale wars since 1947, but none have yet to go nuclear.
And they both have the power.
According to the environmental action group, Natural Resources Defense Council, India and Pakistan have the hardware to make an absolute difference in the world:
- It is difficult to determine the actual size and composition of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals, but NRDC estimates that both countries have a total of 50 to 75 weapons.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we believe India has about 30 to 35 nuclear warheads, slightly fewer than Pakistan, which may have as many as 48.
…
Both countries have fission weapons, similar to the early designs developed by the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
NRDC estimates their explosive yields are 5 to 25 kilotons (1 kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT). By comparison, the yield of the weapon the United States exploded over Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, while the bomb exploded over Nagasaki was 21 kilotons.
According to a recent NRDC discussion with a senior Pakistani military official, Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons are mounted on missiles. India’s nuclear weapons are reportedly gravity bombs deployed on fighter aircraft.
…
Unlike the U.S.-Soviet experience, these two countries have a deep-seated hatred of one another and have fought three wars since both countries became independent.
At least part of the current crisis may be seen as Hindu nationalism versus Muslim fundamentalism.
And on that note, we switch to western Pakistan on its border with Afghanistan, where some bad shit has been waging out of control for some time.
The near-seven-year-long stay of US forces in Afghanistan has amounted to just about nothing.
On Thursday from Reuters:
- More foreign fighters are joining the ranks of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan as militants increasingly cross the border from Pakistan to attack Afghan and Western troops, the Afghan Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.
Afghanistan has kept up a barrage of criticism against neighbour Pakistan in the last three months, accusing Pakistani agents of being behind a string of high-profile attacks and allowing militants sanctuary along the long and porous border.
“The presence of foreign fighters is increasing, and increasingly the operations of the terrorists are led by foreigners,” Defence Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zaher Azimi told a news conference.
Afghan, NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces are struggling to contain a sharp surge in violence as the traditional summer fighting season gets into full swing.
Already more U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan in May and June than in Iraq, where there are some four times more American soldiers.
…
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, said this month there were indications that al Qaeda was switching its focus from Iraq back to Afghanistan.
On that, from the Washington Post today comes word Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the supposedly leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and several of his minions recently booked for Afghanistan.
And why not?
General David McKiernan, commander of Nato’s International Assistance Security Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan, in an interview with Al Jazeera, expressed frustration at not being able to hit the Taliban in Pakistan.
- “[Violence] largely emanates from tribal sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan that allow the freedom of movement of insurgents into Afghanistan.
“My mandate as a Nato commander stops at the border. … You asked me, is it frustrating that organisations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda exist in sanctuaries across the border? – Absolutely frustrating.”
“It’s a regional problem. It is a problem for Pakistan and the leadership for Pakistan and it’s a problem for Afghanistan.”
Just like a knuckleball pitch, it will take more than just muscles to connect bat to ball.
Despite military commanders and US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, both wanting to create another “surge” of GIs into Afghanistan, the tactic might backfire.
Maybe what’s needed is a new set of operational plans:
- “The war in Afghanistan is irregular warfare,” said the officer, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the press. “This requires unconventional forces. As soon as conventional forces greatly outnumber Special Forces in theater, resources are diverted to conventional forces that have the greater need per capita.”
…
Richard Holbrooke, a top State Department official and ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton, said he supported an infusion of troops into southern and eastern Afghanistan to deal with the immediate Taliban threat.
“But I would not like to see us take over this war,” Mr. Holbrooke said, because it would retard the development of Afghanistan’s own security forces and spark a hostile reaction among ordinary Afghans.
“We run the real risk of triggering a xenophobic reaction from a people that has resisted outside forces dating back to Alexander the Great.”
Oh-freakin’-dog-shit!
Hoyt Wilhelm on the mound in the damn-ass bottom of the ninth.
We be fucked!
Boot the Surge
Filed Under Just Plain War | Leave a Comment
One of the most-marvelous and near-enigmatic of military operations in the Iraqi war was the famous “surge,” — Decider George’s answer to the fratricide-like butchery shop he’d created with his invasion and subsequent dumb-ass, greed-obsessive policies.
In January 2007, he ordered a big chunk of US GIs gushed into certain parts of Iraq for a short-shot, hit-’em-hard maneuver aimed at reducing the killing between Iraqis.
Coupled onto a chain of half-dozen interwoven events and situations over a near-two year period, the surge most likely helped calm the ferocious Iraqi countryside a little bit — but direct results of Decider George’s up-tick of boots on-the-ground-decision are so ambiguous the operation comes off now as some sort of mysterious, near-iconic military miracle.
Even use of the actual word ‘surge‘ to indicate rapid increases, i.e., ‘gas prices surge,’ ‘milk prices surge,’ and so forth, has popped up in newspaper headlines, indicating there’s a public that much-so grasps the significance of its meaning.
And the military-term use of “surge” and its implications has become political football.
Barack Obama, fresh from a strange, much-glorious trip across the known universe, seems to have supported the “surge” as he told Tom Brokaw Sunday morning on Meet the Press:
- “If we want to look at the question of judgment, which is the one that John McCain makes, John McCain essential focus has been on the tactical issue of sending more troops.
He’s made his entire approach to foreign policy rest on that support of Bush’s decision to send more troops in.
But we can have a whole range of arguments about bad decisions — the decision to go into Iraq in the first place and whether that was a good strategic decision.”
No matter the conclusion: Iraq is still a crazy place.
In a Sunni town south of Baghdad, seven Shiite pilgrims were ambushed and killed Sunday while enroute to a local shrine.
The incident revealed a tear in the fabled fabric of the so-called “surge.”
One of the ingredients figured in the reduction of overall violence the past few months has been the Awakening movement, whose members are mostly Sunni Arabs, former insurgents/fighters for al-Qaeda or members of criminal gangs, now paid about $300 a month by the US to help keep the peace.
And like a kind of indigenous mercenaries, they want more money.
These are the same guys Jackboot John McCain gets confused about with the US GI surge, then again maybe he’s not, but yet…
And we used “was” as to describe Decider George’s so-called “surge.”
Supposedly the operation is over, now in the past, although more troops are in Iraq than were before the surge started last year.
Voice of America checked the numbers this week:
- Before the surge, there were about 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Now the Pentagon says there are 148,000. That’s a substantial increase, more than 12 percent. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman was asked to explain.
“We’ve always said that we know there are certain capabilities that the United States military is going to have to continue to provide until the Iraqis can establish their own organic ability to do those things – medical, logistics, maintenance, air support,” he responded.
…
But there are 16,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq than before the surge. The Pentagon says some of the other 6,000 extra U.S. troops are in the process of taking over for departing troops, so the overall number should go down by a few thousand in the coming weeks. But that still leaves at least a couple of thousand troops not exactly accounted for.
…
The Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, says some may be leaving in the coming weeks, if their services are not needed by the Iraqis.
In addition, he says U.S. commanders routinely request additional capabilities, such as bomb squads and intelligence units, which results in the deployment of small groups, or even individuals, which can add up over time.
“The onesies and twosies become dozens, and the dozens become a few hundred, and a few hundred become a thousand sometimes,” Whitman said. “It’s just the way it does. Commanders have appetites for capabilities.”
The number crunching this week over the post-surge U.S. troop numbers in Iraq, raises a question – when Iraqi leaders call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by 2010, are they talking about all the troops or just the combat troops?
Or put another way, if the end of the surge left 16,000 troops behind, how many troops would a so-called complete U.S. withdrawal leave behind?
And what has the “surge” has really done?
Maybe the political-military move destroyed the US Army.
According to The American Conservative, the “surge” changed the face of the Army’s future, aided and abetted in escalating the disintegration of the Armed Forces.
- In January 2007, the Bush administration announced a new strategy, a “surge” of troops into Iraq, following a well-circulated counterinsurgency template by American Enterprise Institute fellow Frederick Kagan and now-retired Army Gen. Jack Keane. There were assurances that more “boots on the ground” would lead to some stability in insurgent enclaves, an independent Iraqi national defense, and new legitimacy for the central government—at least enough to justify the phased withdrawal of combat brigades all but mandated by American voters in the 2006 midterm elections.
…
Lawrence J. Korb, former Reagan defense official and retired Navy captain, is less diplomatic. “[Petraeus’s] main concern is his strategy,” he told TAC. “He is putting his interest, which is the battlefield, before the long-term interest of the Army and of the country.”
…
There is little or no flexibility in today’s operational force, which leads many to question what would happen if the global war on terror really went global. At Slate, Fred Kaplan recently took inventory of the Army’s 43 combat brigades. He counted 16 currently in Iraq and Afghanistan, 20 in “dwell time” between deployments, one in Korea, one in transit, another doing global defense, one for “homeland defense,” and the rest unavailable.
…
“The Army is in a zero-sum state: No more soldiers can be sent to Afghanistan without a one-for-one reduction in Iraq,” Kaplan wrote last month. He was responding to talk about sending more troops to Afghanistan to help beat back the Taliban—an idea the Pentagon swiftly kyboshed. (Some 3,200 Iraq-weathered Marines were sent this spring, bringing the total American forces in Afghanistan to 35,000.)
No matter what future President Obama holds, the US military has been purged in the surge.
‘Sledgehammer’ Terror War
Filed Under War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Definition from Merriam-Webster online for terror.
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French terrour, from Latin terror, from terrēre to frighten; akin to Greek trein to be afraid, flee, tremein to tremble — more at tremble
Date:14th century
1: a state of intense fear
2 a: one that inspires fear — scourge; b: a frightening aspect — the terrors of invasion; c: a cause of anxiety — worry; d: an appalling person or thing; especially — brat
3: reign of terror
4: violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands — insurrection and revolutionary terror
synonyms: see fear
On that fateful Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001, a couple of seemingly unrelated people collided in violent contact.
One of those guys is Osama bin Laden.
The other — Decider George.
Of course, it wasn’t actually them, but their henchmen/cronies, and above all, it was in reality their dangerous philosophies which impacted together.
Despite all said about Osama and his boys, one has to give the cave-dwelling sonofabitch credit for anticipation — the US would come to him instead of the other way around.
Decider George’s Wide World of War on Terror has been a total disaster, an incompetent, politically-motivated product that has mangled life not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the US and the rest of the whole, wide world.
Osama says he wants the West out of the Middle East, under which the world’s energy source lies, and that’s why there is now two major conflicts there amid multi-billion US weapons-deals to Persian Gulf countries –Decider George says to Osama, Yeah, so what? Bring ‘em on!
And the US right now is embroiled in disaster — all for politics geared to program of oil for war.
A case in point appeared in this morning’s New York Times under the head, ‘Plan Would Use Antiterror Aid on Pakistani Jets,’ and reported that Decider George and his band of wingnuts want to divert “nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counter-terrorism programs to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.”
- The timing of the action caught lawmakers off guard, prompting some of them to suspect that the deal was meant to curry favor with the new Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, who will meet with President Bush in Washington next week, and to ease tensions over the 11 members of the Pakistani paramilitary forces killed in an American airstrike along the Afghan border last month.
The financing for the F-16s would represent more than two-thirds of the $300 million that Pakistan will receive this year in American military financing for equipment and training.
Last year, Congress specified that those funds be used for law enforcement or counterterrorism. Pakistan’s military has rarely used its current fleet of F-16s, which were built in the 1980s, for close-air support of counterterrorism missions, largely because the risks of civilian casualties would inflame anti-government sentiments in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
And this, buried in the story with absolute-no further explanation:
- State Department officials say the upgrades would greatly enhance the F-16s’ ability to strike insurgents accurately, while reducing the risk to civilians.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress was weighing the plan, said the timing was driven by deadlines of the American contractor, Lockheed Martin.
What the hell?
What’s Lockheed Martin have to do with all this?
Maybe, just maybe — Lockheed Martin is making money hand-over-jack-off-fist.
On Tuesday, the stupendously-behemoth-like defense contractor announced a profit of $882 million:
- …or $2.15 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2008, a 12 percent increase from the second quarter of 2007 when the company recorded a profit of $778 million, or $1.82 per diluted share.
Lockheed (NYSE: LMT), which has facilities in Dallas and Horizon City, Texas, attributes its solid performance in the quarter to strong activity in its aeronautics, electronic systems and information and global services sectors.
Despite aeronautics sales falling 8 percent because of a drop in aircraft sales, the company’s overall net sales increased 4 percent from $10.6 billion in the second quarter of 2007 to $11 billion in the most recent quarter.
Although some might bluster a bit, the bottom line Decider George will get his shit.
Also from the Times report:
- Many Congressional officials remain unconvinced. “Using F-16s this way is like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said one senior Senate Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the current negotiations.
It remains unclear whether any lawmaker will block or postpone the financing, and risk harming relations with Pakistan any further.
Decider George has gotten the US into some bad, rotten water — the river of terror of no return.
Insolent Idiot: ‘It got drunk’
Filed Under Musings, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
During a crisis, or some calamity, under pressure to solve problems, a nation’s leader should be able to help, to solve and put together resources in efforts to figure out the next course of action.
Unless, of course, you’re an inbred, insolent idiot who knows no other life, but an existence of absolute elitism.
Decider George just may not only be by far the worst president in US history, but also an all-around shit-Head of a person.
According to HuffingtonPost, and later the New York Times, Decider George displayed the upper-class snob-life to a bunch of other upper-class snob-lives during a fund raiser in Houston.
Not knowing a sight-and-sound recording was being made, he laughingly blubbered a truth about himself and those who laugh with him in an attempt to explain away the approaching-catastrophic financial woes in the US.
According to the Times:
- “Wall Street got drunk — that’s one reason I asked you to turn off your TV cameras,” the president said at the fund-raiser, held at a private home on Friday to benefit Pete Olson, the Republican who is challenging Representative Nick Lampson.
“It got drunk, and now it’s got a hangover. The question is, How long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?”
Despite the president’s request that those present turn their cameras off, his comments were captured on videotape that made its way into the hands of Miya Shay, a reporter at the Houston television affiliate of ABC.
The video, which also included the newsy tidbit that Laura Bush had begun shopping for houses in Dallas, was broadcast by the station, and by Tuesday it was appearing as well on the Web site of The Houston Chronicle.
…
Mr. Bush, for one, might be expected to benefit from the buyers’ market, though he seemed to lament a belief that he would not.
“And then we got a housing issue,” he said, “not in Houston — evidently not in Dallas, because Laura’s over there trying to buy a house today.”
Decider George really doesn’t make much sense.
Continuing from HuffingtonPost:
- The crowd laughed, and Mr. Bush went on to explain that Mrs. Bush had drawn the line against living at the couple’s Crawford ranch.
“I like Crawford,” he said. “Unfortunately, after eight years of asking her to sacrifice, I am no longer the decision maker. She’ll be deciding.”
There was no word from the White House on Tuesday about what kind of home the Bushes had their eyes on. But in Houston, Mr. Bush said he had offered his wife some guidance: “I did tell her, I said: ‘Honey, we’ve been on government pay now for 14 years. Go slow.’ ”
Reportedly, the YouTube version of the event has been shut down, but one can get a look-see at the ABC News site here.
Watching it, however, can be tedious.
Decider George and all those assholes around him create one of those rare, but unfortunate incidents in which someone can hurt your feelings and really piss-you-off, both at the same time — ex-wives can do such.
The horror of watching an elite pack of people laughing, and even snickering, at such cruel, sarcastic asides like, ‘Honey, we’ve been on government pay now for 14 years. Go slow,’ is that it tends to make one’s skin crawl — creates an image that one would never before imagine originating from the US back when it could claim to be America.
Sort of like watching those old color home movies made of Hitler and his Sunny days in the gardens, playing with dogs, children — life seemed sweet and swell.
Speaking of which, and although one would doubt the situation will emerge, Decider George and his cronies, including even those laughing with him at that creepy Houston fund-raiser, could have committed crimes against humanity.
Last week, the International Criminal Court in the Hague indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The oddly-correct historian Mark A. LeVine has a good take on the comparisons between our own Decider George and Sudan’s al-Bashir.
Bad tiding on boots on the ground:
- When I was in Iraq in the late winter and early spring of 2004 I saw this clearly, and saw the already huge scale of the war crimes being committed systematically by US forces across the country.
It was clear to most every Iraqi I know that the chaos being reaped by the US in Iraq was in fact deliberately sown by the US in order to create a situation that would make any US withdrawal almost impossible to pull off.
As bad as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths for which Bush—and along with him, the American people who elected him twice—are responsible is the fact that the invasion itself was a crime against humanity as it was a clear breach of the UN Charter, which prohibits invading other countries except when an attack on one’s sovereign territory is about to occur or has just occurred.
Indeed, they, along with our torturing of prisoners, illegal secret renditions, and a host of other abuses, are also against US Federal Law.
…
At least in this imperfect world, Bush and the architects and executioners of the Iraq war can join Sudanese President Bashir in suffering the ignominy of being at-large international criminals.
Read all of LeVine’s most-excellent commentary here.
Insolence might have its just ends.
‘An Iraqi Vision’ — Obama on the Euphrates
Filed Under Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
This sad, ugly Wide World of War on Terror has gone from real bad to a mounting realization of a coming catastrophic turn for the worse, even as Barack Obama trips through Afghanistan and Iraq, gaining seemingly popular support, as US warfare tactics cause more and more civilian deaths.
After all this at the pad of Iraq Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s:
- In Baghdad, a red carpet with yellow trim was unfurled at 1:50 p.m. outside Maliki’s residence, located in a part of the residential compound of former president Saddam Hussein that was dubbed “Little Venice” because of its lush gardens and abundant canals, complete with paddling ducks.
Maliki’s shitstorm Saturday that Democrat presidential hopeful Obama had the plan for getting the US military out of the country, and even despite a kind of non-step-back step back Sunday on his comments, continued today.
From the Washington Post:
- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama conferred with senior Iraqi leaders, U.S. officials and military commanders Monday, as a spokesman for the Iraqi government declared that it would like U.S. combat forces to complete their withdrawal in 2010.
The comments by spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh mark the second time in recent days that a senior Iraqi has endorsed a timetable for U.S. withdrawal that is roughly similar to the one advocated by Obama. Dabbagh suggested a combat force pull-out could be completed by the end of 2010, which would be about seven months longer than Obama’s 16-month formulation.
Dabbagh made the statement following Obama’s meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has faced pressure from the White House in recent days to clarify published comments that he supported Obama’s 16-month plan.
Dabbagh declared that his government was working “on a real timetable which Iraqis set” and the 2010 deadline was “an Iraqi vision.”
“We can’t give any schedules or dates, but the Iraqi government sees the suitable date for withdrawal of the U.S. forces is by the end of 2010,” Dabbagh told reporters.
Of course, Decider George’s White House had to respond:
- “We don’t think that talking about specific negotiating tactics or your negotiating position in the press is the best way to negotiate a deal,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, suggesting that Dabbagh was reponding to domestic pressure.
Dana, old gal, we’re not talking about “a deal,” but about the Iraqis giving your asshole of a boss the classic middle finger.
The Iraqis want the US military out and apparently the only way to do it is to perform a sort of speed-up-the-process act by bringing US politics into the picture.
Decider George, Jackboot John McCain, the Republican Party — all in one hellva mess.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer-bunch-of-assholes.
The problem now is both conflicts — the fatal, dangerous and dumb-ass invasion of Iraq, and the original terror-war in Afghanistan — are going tube city mainly because of the collateral damage to civilians.
In Afghanistan, it’s the war from the air.
From the Air Force Times:
- Air Force and allied warplanes are dropping a record number of bombs on Afghanistan targets.
For the first half of 2008, aircraft dropped 1,853 bombs — more than they released during all of 2006 and more than half of 2007’s total — 3,572 bombs.
…
Information from the Air Force shows that in June warplanes released 646 bombs — the second-highest monthly total for Afghanistan or Iraq. The record was set in August 2007, when 670 bombs fell on Afghanistan.
As high as those numbers are, they may understate the intensity of the combat.
The statistics do not include cannon rounds shot by fighters or AC-130 gunships, Hellfire and other small rockets launched by warplanes, and assaults by helicopters.
In close-quarter firefights where friendly soldiers could be wounded if bombs are used, cannon fire and missiles are often the preferred alternative.
Inside Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield, the Air Force keeps a squadron each of A-10 Thunderbolts and F-15E Strike Eagles. From outside of Afghanistan, the Air Force launches B-1B Lancers.
Also flying over Afghanistan are remote-controlled MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, both able to attack targets, and AC-130 gunships.
Foreign warplanes dropping bombs include French Mirage 2000 fighters and British Royal Air Force Harriers, typically flying out of Kandahar Airfield.
For Air Force jets, the preferred bombs are laser-guided bombs and satellite-controlled Joint Direct Attack Munitions.
The most frequently used bombs are the 500- and 2,000-pound satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions and 500-pound laser-guided Paveway bombs.
Unguided bombs sometimes are used, typically when the target is a safe distance from coalition troops and civilians.
And with all that killing pieces of metal flying and bombing and scattering all over the place, a lot of regular-kind-of-people are going to get killed.
- U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces killed nine Afghan police Sunday, calling in air strikes and fighting on the ground for four hours after both sides mistook the other for militants, Afghan officials said.
In a separate incident, NATO said it accidentally killed at least four Afghan civilians Saturday night.
A NATO soldier also was killed in the east.
The two cases of accidental killings could further undercut popular support for the government and foreign forces operating here.
President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with the U.S. and other nations fighting resurgent militants to avoid civilian casualties.
In the western province of Farah near the Iranian border, a convoy of foreign forces showed up in Anar Dara district and clashed with Afghan police, killing nine of them, said provincial Deputy Governor Younus Rasuli.
…
In eastern Paktika province, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said it killed at least four civilians Saturday night when its troops fired two mortar rounds that landed nearly half a mile short of their target.
NATO said it was investigating whether three other civilians also were killed in the Barmal district.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Iraq:
- The US military said it shot two armed men and later found out they were both related to the governor.
Governor Hamad al-Qaisi’s brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Saad al-Qaisi, said American troops stormed a family house in the town of Beiji, where the governor’s son Hussam and his cousin were staying.
“They shot dead Hussam and wounded three others. This is barbaric and inhuman,” he said.
…
A statement from the US military said its forces had wounded and captured an al-Qaeda financer in the house.
“As they entered the target building, coalition forces encountered two armed men. Perceiving hostile intent … they shot and killed the men. It was subsequently determined that the two … were related to the governor,” the statement said.
Local officials said Governor al-Qaisi had cut short a visit to Turkey because of the shooting.
As the US crawls out of Iraq, troops will be slowly be transferred to Afghanistan, but it may be too little too late.