Just an idea for alternative energy.
http://www.ecn.nl/index.en.html
Also, diesel runs on vegtable oil or soy and can work without loss of hp, after all it's what Rudolf Diesel originally designed the engine to run on.
Iraq War explained
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DVD Burner
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joel the ornery
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'Iraqisation' will prevent repeat of Vietnam
Nov 26
Melvin Laird | Foreign Affairs
More than 30 years of spin about the Vietnam War has left the United States averse to intervening in a just cause and dubious of its ability to get out of a war once it is in one. The renewed vilification of our role in Vietnam in light of the war in Iraq has prompted me to speak out.
The war in Iraq is not "another Vietnam". But it could become one if we ignore the Vietnam War's true lessons. My perspective comes from military service in the Pacific in World War II, nine terms in the US House of Representatives and four years as secretary of defence to president Richard Nixon.
The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. We grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own.
Over the four years of Nixon's first term I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself. Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated an agreement between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, signed in January 1973. It allowed for the United States to withdraw completely its troops and for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue funding their respective allies in the war at a specified level.
The Soviets violated the treaty, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi. The US military aid was a fraction of that, yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own against a better-bankrolled enemy.
In the end, the president, the secretary of state and the secretary of defence did not stand up for the commitments our nation had made to South Vietnam. Any president or cabinet officer who is turned down by Congress when he asks for funding for a matter of defence has not tried hard enough.
More recently, Donald Rumsfeld's overconfident and self-assured style did not play well with Congress during his first term. If he wants something from those who are elected to make decisions for the American people, then he must show more deference. To do otherwise will endanger public support and the funding stream for the Iraq war.
Another great tragedy of Vietnam was the Americanisation of the war. By the time Nixon and I inherited the war in 1969, there were more than 500,000 US troops in South Vietnam and 1.2million more US personnel supporting the war.
We need to put our resources behind a program of "Iraq-isation" so we can get out of Iraq and leave the Iraqis able to protect themselves. The administration must adhere to a standard of competence for the Iraqi security forces, and when that standard is met US troops should be withdrawn in corresponding numbers. Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency.
Bush should not make public his specific standards for determining when Iraqi troops are ready to go it alone, and his top commander in the field should have the final say on how many US troops can come home, commensurate with the readiness of Iraqi forces. Bush's trust in his commander's judgement must be conveyed to the American people, if they are to be patient with an orderly withdrawal of our troops.
Both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war were launched based on intelligence failures and possibly outright deception. The infamous pretext for the Vietnam War was the Gulf of Tonkin incident: president Lyndon Johnson and defence secretary Robert McNamara either dissembled or misinterpreted the faulty intelligence about the episode. I, along with 501 colleagues in the House and Senate, voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which escalated our role in Vietnam.
In Iraq, the intelligence blunder concerned Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, which may or may not have been Bush's real motivation for going to war. Whatever the truth, it has led many to complain that the United States was drawn into the war under false pretences, that what began as self-defence has morphed into nation building.
But wars are fluid things and missions change. The early US objective in South-East Asia was to stop the spread of communism. When the threat of a communist empire diminished, the United States changed its mission to self-determination for Vietnam.
Bush sees Iraq as the front line in the war on terror, because of the opportunity to displace militant extremists' Islamist rule throughout the region. Since Iraq has been set on a new course, Bush has an opportunity to reshape the region Unfortunately, Bush has done an uneven job of selling his message. Recent polls show a waning of support for the war. When troops are dying, the commander in chief cannot be vague or secretive, we learned in Vietnam.
Bush is losing the public relations war by making the same mistakes we made. Vietnam was the first televised US war. Had the mothers and fathers of US soldiers serving in World War II seen a CNN report of D-Day, they might not have thought Europe was worth saving. The danger to one US soldier, captured on tape, becomes a threat to everyone's son or daughter.
I have been in combat and, for a soldier, ducking a sniper's bullet in downtown Baghdad is all in a day's work if he believes in his mission. The key for Bush is to communicate that sense of mission to the people back home.
Just as the spread of communism was real in the 1960s, so the spread of radical fundamentalist Islam is real today. Iraq was a logical place to fight back, with its secular government and modern infrastructure and a populace that was ready to overthrow its dictator.
Our troops are not fighting only to preserve the right of Iraqis to vote. They are fighting to preserve modern culture, Western democracy, the global economy and all that is threatened by the spread of barbarism in the name of religion.
Three decades ago, Asia really was threatened by the spread of communism. In Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and even India, communist movements failed in large part because the United States drew a line at Vietnam that sucked resources away from the Soviet Union.
Similarly, the effect of our stand in Iraq is already being felt around the Middle East. Opposition parties are demanding to be heard. Veiled women are insisting on a voice. Syrian troops have left Lebanon. Egypt has held an election. Iran is being pressured by the United States and Europe alike on its development of nuclear weapons.
As one who orchestrated the end of our military role in Vietnam and then saw what had been a workable plan fall apart, I agree that we cannot allow "another Vietnam". For if we fail now a new standard will have been set. The lessons of Vietnam will be forgotten, and our next global mission will be saddled with the fear of its becoming "another Iraq".
Melvin Laird was US secretary of defence from 1969 to 1973, counsellor to the president for domestic affairs from 1973 to 1974, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1952 to 1969. He currently serves as senior counsellor for national and international affairs at the Reader's Digest Association.
© Foreign Affairs Magazine, 2005
Nov 26
Melvin Laird | Foreign Affairs
More than 30 years of spin about the Vietnam War has left the United States averse to intervening in a just cause and dubious of its ability to get out of a war once it is in one. The renewed vilification of our role in Vietnam in light of the war in Iraq has prompted me to speak out.
The war in Iraq is not "another Vietnam". But it could become one if we ignore the Vietnam War's true lessons. My perspective comes from military service in the Pacific in World War II, nine terms in the US House of Representatives and four years as secretary of defence to president Richard Nixon.
The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. We grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own.
Over the four years of Nixon's first term I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself. Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated an agreement between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, signed in January 1973. It allowed for the United States to withdraw completely its troops and for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue funding their respective allies in the war at a specified level.
The Soviets violated the treaty, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi. The US military aid was a fraction of that, yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own against a better-bankrolled enemy.
In the end, the president, the secretary of state and the secretary of defence did not stand up for the commitments our nation had made to South Vietnam. Any president or cabinet officer who is turned down by Congress when he asks for funding for a matter of defence has not tried hard enough.
More recently, Donald Rumsfeld's overconfident and self-assured style did not play well with Congress during his first term. If he wants something from those who are elected to make decisions for the American people, then he must show more deference. To do otherwise will endanger public support and the funding stream for the Iraq war.
Another great tragedy of Vietnam was the Americanisation of the war. By the time Nixon and I inherited the war in 1969, there were more than 500,000 US troops in South Vietnam and 1.2million more US personnel supporting the war.
We need to put our resources behind a program of "Iraq-isation" so we can get out of Iraq and leave the Iraqis able to protect themselves. The administration must adhere to a standard of competence for the Iraqi security forces, and when that standard is met US troops should be withdrawn in corresponding numbers. Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency.
Bush should not make public his specific standards for determining when Iraqi troops are ready to go it alone, and his top commander in the field should have the final say on how many US troops can come home, commensurate with the readiness of Iraqi forces. Bush's trust in his commander's judgement must be conveyed to the American people, if they are to be patient with an orderly withdrawal of our troops.
Both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war were launched based on intelligence failures and possibly outright deception. The infamous pretext for the Vietnam War was the Gulf of Tonkin incident: president Lyndon Johnson and defence secretary Robert McNamara either dissembled or misinterpreted the faulty intelligence about the episode. I, along with 501 colleagues in the House and Senate, voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which escalated our role in Vietnam.
In Iraq, the intelligence blunder concerned Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, which may or may not have been Bush's real motivation for going to war. Whatever the truth, it has led many to complain that the United States was drawn into the war under false pretences, that what began as self-defence has morphed into nation building.
But wars are fluid things and missions change. The early US objective in South-East Asia was to stop the spread of communism. When the threat of a communist empire diminished, the United States changed its mission to self-determination for Vietnam.
Bush sees Iraq as the front line in the war on terror, because of the opportunity to displace militant extremists' Islamist rule throughout the region. Since Iraq has been set on a new course, Bush has an opportunity to reshape the region Unfortunately, Bush has done an uneven job of selling his message. Recent polls show a waning of support for the war. When troops are dying, the commander in chief cannot be vague or secretive, we learned in Vietnam.
Bush is losing the public relations war by making the same mistakes we made. Vietnam was the first televised US war. Had the mothers and fathers of US soldiers serving in World War II seen a CNN report of D-Day, they might not have thought Europe was worth saving. The danger to one US soldier, captured on tape, becomes a threat to everyone's son or daughter.
I have been in combat and, for a soldier, ducking a sniper's bullet in downtown Baghdad is all in a day's work if he believes in his mission. The key for Bush is to communicate that sense of mission to the people back home.
Just as the spread of communism was real in the 1960s, so the spread of radical fundamentalist Islam is real today. Iraq was a logical place to fight back, with its secular government and modern infrastructure and a populace that was ready to overthrow its dictator.
Our troops are not fighting only to preserve the right of Iraqis to vote. They are fighting to preserve modern culture, Western democracy, the global economy and all that is threatened by the spread of barbarism in the name of religion.
Three decades ago, Asia really was threatened by the spread of communism. In Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and even India, communist movements failed in large part because the United States drew a line at Vietnam that sucked resources away from the Soviet Union.
Similarly, the effect of our stand in Iraq is already being felt around the Middle East. Opposition parties are demanding to be heard. Veiled women are insisting on a voice. Syrian troops have left Lebanon. Egypt has held an election. Iran is being pressured by the United States and Europe alike on its development of nuclear weapons.
As one who orchestrated the end of our military role in Vietnam and then saw what had been a workable plan fall apart, I agree that we cannot allow "another Vietnam". For if we fail now a new standard will have been set. The lessons of Vietnam will be forgotten, and our next global mission will be saddled with the fear of its becoming "another Iraq".
Melvin Laird was US secretary of defence from 1969 to 1973, counsellor to the president for domestic affairs from 1973 to 1974, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1952 to 1969. He currently serves as senior counsellor for national and international affairs at the Reader's Digest Association.
© Foreign Affairs Magazine, 2005
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EvilDustBooger
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Lots of truth in here mixed with plenty of spin.
2 points:
#1) One does not "duck" a sniper`s bullet. To think that would be folly for anyone in a combat situation. The key to surviving a sniper`s bullet is in not presenting a target...very difficult in a hostile urban environment.
#2) He would be refered to as the Secretary of DefenSe. I don`t know why that bothers me so much.....
2 points:
#1) One does not "duck" a sniper`s bullet. To think that would be folly for anyone in a combat situation. The key to surviving a sniper`s bullet is in not presenting a target...very difficult in a hostile urban environment.
#2) He would be refered to as the Secretary of DefenSe. I don`t know why that bothers me so much.....
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Apollonaris Zeus
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Simply Joel
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UNDETERRED by scattered violence, Iraqis voted in large numbers in an election overnight, with minority Sunni Arabs who boycotted the last poll determined not to miss out on power again.
Who would have thought, free elections in Iraq... at least freer than under Saddam.
Hurray for free elections in Iraq.
Who would have thought, free elections in Iraq... at least freer than under Saddam.
Hurray for free elections in Iraq.
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EvilDustBooger
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Simply Joel
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simply unforgivable behavior...
A War Without Heroes? Fred Barnes
Sun Dec 18,12:27 PM ET
DO YOU KNOW WHO PAUL Ray Smith is? If not, don't feel bad. Most Americans aren't familiar with Paul Ray Smith. He is the first and only soldier awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary courage in the war in Iraq. Five days before Baghdad fell in April 2003, Sergeant Smith and his men were building a makeshift jail for captured Iraqi troops.
Surprised by 100 of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards, Smith and his men, some of them wounded, were pinned down and in danger of being overrun. Smith manned a 50-caliber machine gun atop a damaged armored vehicle. Exposed to enemy fire, he singlehandedly repelled the attack, allowing his men to scramble to safety. He killed as many as 50 of Saddam's elite soldiers and saved more than 100 American troops. Paul Ray Smith, 33, was killed by a shot to the head.
The war in Iraq is a war without heroes. There are no men--or women, for that matter--known to most Americans for their bravery in combat. There are no household names like Audie Murphy or Sgt. York or Arthur MacArthur or even Don Holleder, the West Point football star killed in Vietnam. When President Bush held a White House ceremony to award the Medal of Honor to Smith, posthumously, the TV networks and big newspapers reported the story. The coverage lasted one day. The story didn't have legs.
Instead of heroes, there are victims. The two most famous soldiers in the war are Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman (in Afghanistan). Lynch was captured by Saddam's troops after her truck crashed. Stories of her heroism in a gun battle with Iraqis turned out to be false. She was rescued later from an Iraqi hospital. Tillman, who gave up a pro football career to join the Army, was killed by friendly fire. "The press made that a negative story, a scandal almost," says a Pentagon official.
It gets worse. In a study of over 1,300 reports broadcast on network news programs from January to September of this year, Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center found only eight stories of heroism or valor by American troops and nine of soldiers helping the Iraqi people. But there were 79 stories, Noyes said, "focused on allegations of combat mistakes or outright misconduct on the part of U.S. military personnel."
Who is responsible for the lack of heroes? The Pentagon bears some of the blame. "We could do a better job," says Larry Di Rita, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. But the fault lies mostly with the media. With the striking exception of CBS News, the media aren't interested in stories of heroism by Americans in Iraq.
And even when the media take an interest, it isn't always respectful. When CNN took up the medal awarded to Smith the day after the ceremony at the White House, here's how anchor Paula Zahn presented it:
"Time now for all of you to choose your favorite person of the day. Every day, you can vote on our website, cnn.com/paula. Today's choices: the mourners pouring into Rome, spending hours in line to pay their respects to the pope; Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Paul Smith for giving his life to save so many of his fellow soldiers in Iraq. And British prime minister Tony Blair, calling for a new election, even though his party has lost support in the polls."
At least Smith won. Zahn went on to describe his heroic act and call up soundbites from the president and Smith's widow. "His actions in that courtyard saved the lives of more than 100 American soldiers. Scripture tells us . . . that a man has no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends."
The New York Times took an odd approach to the Paul Ray Smith case. The nearer the awarding of the Medal of Honor came, the less coverage the Smith case got. It was as if the Times didn't want President Bush to get any credit for honoring Smith.
The day after the White House event, the Times put a picture of Smith on page A16 with a brief caption. True, the Times had run two earlier stories about Smith, one in 2003, the other earlier this year. The first was headlined: "The Struggle for Iraq: Casualties; Medals for His Valor, Ashes for His Wife." The second said Smith would get the Medal of Honor.
The back-page treatment of the award ceremony infuriated the White House. "We keep hearing how the people opposed to the war are not against the troops but only against the president," an official said. "Man wins the highest medal this nation offers--and you know how rare that is--and the Times does not think that is worth a full story and on page one. The Medal of Honor is not about the president. It is about the troops."
The media have no excuse for ignoring heroism. "There's no dearth of opportunity there," says Di Rita. In Iraq and Afghanistan, American Marines alone have been awarded 8 Navy Crosses, 35 Silver Stars, 617 Bronze Stars with "V," 1,126 Bronze Stars, and 5,197 Purple Hearts.
For its part, the White House has made an effort to play up heroes. In his speeches on Iraq, the president frequently singles out soldiers and sailors. Last month in Annapolis, Bush cited Marine Corporal Jeff Starr, who had been killed in Ramadi. He left behind a message on his laptop and the president read a portion of it. "If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq," he wrote. "I don't regret going. Everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom."
Last July 4, Bush spoke at West Virginia University and mentioned two men who'd served in Iraq with the state's National Guard. One of them, Lieutenant James McCormick, had just written him a letter. "If needed, all of us would return and continue the mission," McCormick wrote. "It's a just and much needed fight."
Bill McGurn, the chief White House speechwriter, says the stories of heroism are easy to find. "There are gazillions of them," he says. "It's like dipping your hand in a barrel and pulling one out." And when the president mentions a brave American service man or woman, that person tends to get some press coverage, if only in a hometown paper.
There is an exception to the rule on heroes. Beginning in May 2004, CBS News began running a short feature on "fallen heroes" on its evening news show--every night. A few sentences touched on the life and death of a deceased soldier. Despite the name, however, these stories did not focus on heroism. Then on December 5, 2005, CBS revamped the feature and began calling it "American Heroes." The segment was expanded to include, as anchor Bob Schieffer put it, "not only those killed in the war zones, but also those who display exceptional courage on the battlefield and beyond."
On December 8, the hero was Gary Villalobos. He and his lieutenant were ambushed during a house-to-house hunt for enemy soldiers. The lieutenant was killed. Villalobos didn't retreat. He fought off insurgents and risked his life to protect a fellow soldier. In all, the CBS segment consisted of only 67 words--but words rarely spoken by the media.
The CBS feature, as admirable as it is, won't create national heroes. The segments are too short and involve a different person each night. For a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan to achieve national renown--to become a celebrity even--the media would have to dwell on his heroism. That didn't happen with Paul Ray Smith. So don't get your hopes up.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
Sun Dec 18,12:27 PM ET
DO YOU KNOW WHO PAUL Ray Smith is? If not, don't feel bad. Most Americans aren't familiar with Paul Ray Smith. He is the first and only soldier awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary courage in the war in Iraq. Five days before Baghdad fell in April 2003, Sergeant Smith and his men were building a makeshift jail for captured Iraqi troops.
Surprised by 100 of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards, Smith and his men, some of them wounded, were pinned down and in danger of being overrun. Smith manned a 50-caliber machine gun atop a damaged armored vehicle. Exposed to enemy fire, he singlehandedly repelled the attack, allowing his men to scramble to safety. He killed as many as 50 of Saddam's elite soldiers and saved more than 100 American troops. Paul Ray Smith, 33, was killed by a shot to the head.
The war in Iraq is a war without heroes. There are no men--or women, for that matter--known to most Americans for their bravery in combat. There are no household names like Audie Murphy or Sgt. York or Arthur MacArthur or even Don Holleder, the West Point football star killed in Vietnam. When President Bush held a White House ceremony to award the Medal of Honor to Smith, posthumously, the TV networks and big newspapers reported the story. The coverage lasted one day. The story didn't have legs.
Instead of heroes, there are victims. The two most famous soldiers in the war are Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman (in Afghanistan). Lynch was captured by Saddam's troops after her truck crashed. Stories of her heroism in a gun battle with Iraqis turned out to be false. She was rescued later from an Iraqi hospital. Tillman, who gave up a pro football career to join the Army, was killed by friendly fire. "The press made that a negative story, a scandal almost," says a Pentagon official.
It gets worse. In a study of over 1,300 reports broadcast on network news programs from January to September of this year, Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center found only eight stories of heroism or valor by American troops and nine of soldiers helping the Iraqi people. But there were 79 stories, Noyes said, "focused on allegations of combat mistakes or outright misconduct on the part of U.S. military personnel."
Who is responsible for the lack of heroes? The Pentagon bears some of the blame. "We could do a better job," says Larry Di Rita, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. But the fault lies mostly with the media. With the striking exception of CBS News, the media aren't interested in stories of heroism by Americans in Iraq.
And even when the media take an interest, it isn't always respectful. When CNN took up the medal awarded to Smith the day after the ceremony at the White House, here's how anchor Paula Zahn presented it:
"Time now for all of you to choose your favorite person of the day. Every day, you can vote on our website, cnn.com/paula. Today's choices: the mourners pouring into Rome, spending hours in line to pay their respects to the pope; Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Paul Smith for giving his life to save so many of his fellow soldiers in Iraq. And British prime minister Tony Blair, calling for a new election, even though his party has lost support in the polls."
At least Smith won. Zahn went on to describe his heroic act and call up soundbites from the president and Smith's widow. "His actions in that courtyard saved the lives of more than 100 American soldiers. Scripture tells us . . . that a man has no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends."
The New York Times took an odd approach to the Paul Ray Smith case. The nearer the awarding of the Medal of Honor came, the less coverage the Smith case got. It was as if the Times didn't want President Bush to get any credit for honoring Smith.
The day after the White House event, the Times put a picture of Smith on page A16 with a brief caption. True, the Times had run two earlier stories about Smith, one in 2003, the other earlier this year. The first was headlined: "The Struggle for Iraq: Casualties; Medals for His Valor, Ashes for His Wife." The second said Smith would get the Medal of Honor.
The back-page treatment of the award ceremony infuriated the White House. "We keep hearing how the people opposed to the war are not against the troops but only against the president," an official said. "Man wins the highest medal this nation offers--and you know how rare that is--and the Times does not think that is worth a full story and on page one. The Medal of Honor is not about the president. It is about the troops."
The media have no excuse for ignoring heroism. "There's no dearth of opportunity there," says Di Rita. In Iraq and Afghanistan, American Marines alone have been awarded 8 Navy Crosses, 35 Silver Stars, 617 Bronze Stars with "V," 1,126 Bronze Stars, and 5,197 Purple Hearts.
For its part, the White House has made an effort to play up heroes. In his speeches on Iraq, the president frequently singles out soldiers and sailors. Last month in Annapolis, Bush cited Marine Corporal Jeff Starr, who had been killed in Ramadi. He left behind a message on his laptop and the president read a portion of it. "If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq," he wrote. "I don't regret going. Everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom."
Last July 4, Bush spoke at West Virginia University and mentioned two men who'd served in Iraq with the state's National Guard. One of them, Lieutenant James McCormick, had just written him a letter. "If needed, all of us would return and continue the mission," McCormick wrote. "It's a just and much needed fight."
Bill McGurn, the chief White House speechwriter, says the stories of heroism are easy to find. "There are gazillions of them," he says. "It's like dipping your hand in a barrel and pulling one out." And when the president mentions a brave American service man or woman, that person tends to get some press coverage, if only in a hometown paper.
There is an exception to the rule on heroes. Beginning in May 2004, CBS News began running a short feature on "fallen heroes" on its evening news show--every night. A few sentences touched on the life and death of a deceased soldier. Despite the name, however, these stories did not focus on heroism. Then on December 5, 2005, CBS revamped the feature and began calling it "American Heroes." The segment was expanded to include, as anchor Bob Schieffer put it, "not only those killed in the war zones, but also those who display exceptional courage on the battlefield and beyond."
On December 8, the hero was Gary Villalobos. He and his lieutenant were ambushed during a house-to-house hunt for enemy soldiers. The lieutenant was killed. Villalobos didn't retreat. He fought off insurgents and risked his life to protect a fellow soldier. In all, the CBS segment consisted of only 67 words--but words rarely spoken by the media.
The CBS feature, as admirable as it is, won't create national heroes. The segments are too short and involve a different person each night. For a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan to achieve national renown--to become a celebrity even--the media would have to dwell on his heroism. That didn't happen with Paul Ray Smith. So don't get your hopes up.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby
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Kinetic IV
- Posts: 2977
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I haven't really taken a position on the war, and I usually dislike highly slanted news articles. But that post really irritates me. The Medal of Honor is truly earned and the recepient deserves the recognition and IMHO our sincere gratitude. So to see a MOH recepient slighted just makes me mad.
Thanks for posting that Joel.
Thanks for posting that Joel.
K-IV
~~~~
Thank you for over 7 years of eplaya memories. I have asked Emily Sparkle to delete my account and I am gone. Goodbye and Goodluck to all of you! I will miss you!
~~~~
Thank you for over 7 years of eplaya memories. I have asked Emily Sparkle to delete my account and I am gone. Goodbye and Goodluck to all of you! I will miss you!
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redd_18235
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- Location: Austin, TX
An end all solution (maybe)
Here it is. An end all solution to the war in Iraq and the oil dependancy that fuels the violence. Of course, many things have to go just right for it to work, but it's a step in the right direction. Ok, step one: US government must drill for oil in Alaska and off the coast of California along with anywhere else oil can be found. Step two: US government must sell the oil on the world market for zero to little profit - i.e. if it cost $20 to produce one barrel, sell that one barrel for a little over $20. That way all other countries with any sense would buy from the US and not the middle east. No more trillions of dollars being funneled into the middle east. No money = no weapons or troops. Terrorist organizations would crumble. Step three: This is the crutial step. The president MUST create an "X" prize for electric cars. Some of you are familiar with the X prize for a space shuttle created privatly to go into orbit, back to earth, and back to orbit within 2 weeks. I think the prize was 10 mil. Competition always brings out the best in people. Next, the president needs to pass a law banning private use of fossel fuel that takes effect in twenty or thirty years or so. Big rigs, airplanes, busses, and construction like vehicles would still be permited to use it. Just not privatly owned cars which really makes up for most of the emmissions anyway. If effective, our country will go from the largest consumer of oil to the smallest. Whew what a mouth full. Ok, feel free to punch holes in this uber cool plan now. Constructive critisism is always welcome.
"The Gods will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. The surprize is just how much that is."
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joel the ornery
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um.... this explains it to me.
August 17, 2006
Bodies Yield Evidence of Hussein-Era Killings
By KIRK SEMPLE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 11 — Beneath the clinical glare of fluorescent lights in a collection of makeshift laboratories here, the victims of mass murder under Saddam Hussein are slowly brought back to life.
For two years, a team of forensic scientists from around the world has sifted through bones, clothes, identity papers and spent bullet casings exhumed from mass graves to build criminal cases against Mr. Hussein and to reconstruct the victims’ final moments.
“I made a decision we’re going to give the individual a voice,” Michael K. Trimble, the director of the mass graves team, said during a recent tour of the laboratories, on a secret site in western Baghdad.
That voice, he said, is captured in a four-page file, one for each victim, describing the data that the scientists have been able to glean from the skeletal remains and other evidence.
In all, the investigators have excavated nine mass graves — from among the more than 200 scattered around the country containing, by some estimates, tens of thousands of victims — and have completed more than 330 files.
The forensic files will come into play for the first time on Aug. 21, when Mr. Hussein is to stand trial on genocide charges, accused of trying to annihilate the Kurdish people in 1988. He is alleged to have ordered military operations that wiped out entire villages, sometimes with chemical weapons, killing at least 50,000 people.
The team, part of the Regime Crimes Liaison Office organized by the United States Justice Department, has been helping the Iraqi judicial system try Mr. Hussein and members of his government.
It is also preparing files on Mr. Hussein’s brutal suppression of the Shiite uprising across southern Iraq at the end of the Persian Gulf war in early 1991. At least 100,000 Shiites, and possibly twice that number, died, according to court officials.
Those would be the second and third trials of Mr. Hussein before an Iraqi special tribunal. The first concerned the deaths of 148 men and boys in the mostly Shiite town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982. It has been adjourned until October, when a verdict is expected. The forensic team did not participate in that case.
The forensic case files are a result of painstaking work that began on barren sweeps of desert where the team was led by informants or by satellite imagery that suggested that the ground had been disturbed.
In a meticulous process of documentation, the investigators used sophisticated imaging technology to map the contents of the graves, including the location of each body, spent cartridge and bullet. The remains were then flown by helicopter to the team’s laboratories in a fortified compound in western Baghdad.
On a gray wooden work table in the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, two yellowing skeletons lay side by side. One was that of a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 with a bullet hole in the back of her skull. Next to her were the tiny bones of an infant no older than a year. A separate bullet had shattered the baby’s skull, which investigators reassembled using surgical tape.
These were Case No. 19 (the baby) and No. 20 (the woman), two of the 123 victims whose bodies Mr. Trimble’s team pulled from a mass grave in a remote area about 60 miles from the northern town of Hatra.
The grave, known as Nineveh 2, is one of three sites the investigators are using to help build the Kurdish genocide case against Mr. Hussein. The skeletal remains, still clothed, were found lying face up, the woman’s left arm around the child, who was wrapped in a blanket decorated with a bunny appliqué.
The woman may have been the child’s mother, or perhaps a relative or a neighbor — the investigators cannot say for sure. But what is certain is that they died in an embrace.
Raad Juhi, the chief investigative judge, said the victims had been told that they were being relocated from their villages near Sulaimaniya to a residential complex elsewhere.
Case No. 20 was dressed in five layers of clothing, suggesting that she had not been allowed to pack a suitcase and had left home in a hurry. She was carrying a handbag with some baby clothes and personal items: a spool of thread, a tube of antibiotic ointment, matches, a metal container, some coins, a barrette and five pairs of gold earrings.
The child was dressed in soft white pants, a red pullover and a white long-sleeved shirt decorated with red trim, a drawing of a red sun hat and the word “summer.”
Like thousands of other victims, Mr. Juhi said, the victims were herded aboard buses and driven to a holding camp near Kirkuk called Topzawa. From there they were driven into the remote desert, separated into groups — men in one, women and children in another — and then corralled into trenches.
It all “was very systematic, highly organized,” Mr. Trimble said
In some cases, gunmen stood above the mass graves and sprayed their victims with automatic gunfire. The women and children in Nineveh 2, though, were executed in a far more meticulous fashion: one by one, with gunshots to the back of the head, the investigators said. Of the 123 victims, 95 were children, 88 of them no older than 12.
In another tent, Mark Smith, the team’s archaeological field director, stood before a computer screen and demonstrated how researchers had reduced the tragedy to digitized data to aid prosecutors in constructing a precise narrative of those final gruesome minutes.
He went through several different graphic renderings of a mass grave associated with the Shiite uprising: one showed the outlines of all the bodies, others the bodies color-coded by age range, the number of gunshots they suffered and whether they were wearing blindfolds or had their hands bound.
Those maps help investigators analyze how the victims were marched in, where the gunmen were standing, the trajectory of the bullets and how the bodies fell. “We’re looking for patterns,” Mr. Smith said.
Several yards away, in the Cultural Objects Laboratory, Ariana Fernández, a cultural anthropologist from Costa Rica, studied the clothes and artifacts found on the bodies in an effort to draw further clues about their identities and their fates.
Mannequins dressed in recovered clothing populate the laboratory, giving it the look of a wardrobe workshop. On a large plywood board, Ms. Fernández had laid out the clothing that Case No. 19 and Case No. 20 were wearing when they were murdered.
“You take them from the ground, you lift them up and they’re individuals again,” she said. “It humanizes them.”
The researchers have given some of the victims nicknames: Quinn — after the Bob Dylan song “Quinn the Eskimo” — for a boy who was found in a ski jacket with a fluffy hood; Pochahontas for a girl wearing a shirt with a beaded design; and Gray Guy, Brown Guy and the Blue Man.
“It’s not a deliberate thing,” explained Kerrie Grant, an archaeologist on the mass graves team. “We get attached to them. It gives them some of their humanity back.”
There was also “The Little Girl With the Ball.” She was found in Nineveh 2 with a red-and-white ball in her hands. “You spend enough time with these individuals, you really want to see them go home,” Mr. Trimble said.
But it is a cold reality of the job that the team’s mandate — and budget — do not encompass the return of the victims’ remains to their home villages.
That work, they hope, will be taken up by other organizations if the violence eases. But so far no group has come forward, and until then, the hundreds exhumed by the mass graves team will have to speak for the tens of thousands of others who remain buried.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting for this article.
Bodies Yield Evidence of Hussein-Era Killings
By KIRK SEMPLE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 11 — Beneath the clinical glare of fluorescent lights in a collection of makeshift laboratories here, the victims of mass murder under Saddam Hussein are slowly brought back to life.
For two years, a team of forensic scientists from around the world has sifted through bones, clothes, identity papers and spent bullet casings exhumed from mass graves to build criminal cases against Mr. Hussein and to reconstruct the victims’ final moments.
“I made a decision we’re going to give the individual a voice,” Michael K. Trimble, the director of the mass graves team, said during a recent tour of the laboratories, on a secret site in western Baghdad.
That voice, he said, is captured in a four-page file, one for each victim, describing the data that the scientists have been able to glean from the skeletal remains and other evidence.
In all, the investigators have excavated nine mass graves — from among the more than 200 scattered around the country containing, by some estimates, tens of thousands of victims — and have completed more than 330 files.
The forensic files will come into play for the first time on Aug. 21, when Mr. Hussein is to stand trial on genocide charges, accused of trying to annihilate the Kurdish people in 1988. He is alleged to have ordered military operations that wiped out entire villages, sometimes with chemical weapons, killing at least 50,000 people.
The team, part of the Regime Crimes Liaison Office organized by the United States Justice Department, has been helping the Iraqi judicial system try Mr. Hussein and members of his government.
It is also preparing files on Mr. Hussein’s brutal suppression of the Shiite uprising across southern Iraq at the end of the Persian Gulf war in early 1991. At least 100,000 Shiites, and possibly twice that number, died, according to court officials.
Those would be the second and third trials of Mr. Hussein before an Iraqi special tribunal. The first concerned the deaths of 148 men and boys in the mostly Shiite town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982. It has been adjourned until October, when a verdict is expected. The forensic team did not participate in that case.
The forensic case files are a result of painstaking work that began on barren sweeps of desert where the team was led by informants or by satellite imagery that suggested that the ground had been disturbed.
In a meticulous process of documentation, the investigators used sophisticated imaging technology to map the contents of the graves, including the location of each body, spent cartridge and bullet. The remains were then flown by helicopter to the team’s laboratories in a fortified compound in western Baghdad.
On a gray wooden work table in the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, two yellowing skeletons lay side by side. One was that of a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 with a bullet hole in the back of her skull. Next to her were the tiny bones of an infant no older than a year. A separate bullet had shattered the baby’s skull, which investigators reassembled using surgical tape.
These were Case No. 19 (the baby) and No. 20 (the woman), two of the 123 victims whose bodies Mr. Trimble’s team pulled from a mass grave in a remote area about 60 miles from the northern town of Hatra.
The grave, known as Nineveh 2, is one of three sites the investigators are using to help build the Kurdish genocide case against Mr. Hussein. The skeletal remains, still clothed, were found lying face up, the woman’s left arm around the child, who was wrapped in a blanket decorated with a bunny appliqué.
The woman may have been the child’s mother, or perhaps a relative or a neighbor — the investigators cannot say for sure. But what is certain is that they died in an embrace.
Raad Juhi, the chief investigative judge, said the victims had been told that they were being relocated from their villages near Sulaimaniya to a residential complex elsewhere.
Case No. 20 was dressed in five layers of clothing, suggesting that she had not been allowed to pack a suitcase and had left home in a hurry. She was carrying a handbag with some baby clothes and personal items: a spool of thread, a tube of antibiotic ointment, matches, a metal container, some coins, a barrette and five pairs of gold earrings.
The child was dressed in soft white pants, a red pullover and a white long-sleeved shirt decorated with red trim, a drawing of a red sun hat and the word “summer.”
Like thousands of other victims, Mr. Juhi said, the victims were herded aboard buses and driven to a holding camp near Kirkuk called Topzawa. From there they were driven into the remote desert, separated into groups — men in one, women and children in another — and then corralled into trenches.
It all “was very systematic, highly organized,” Mr. Trimble said
In some cases, gunmen stood above the mass graves and sprayed their victims with automatic gunfire. The women and children in Nineveh 2, though, were executed in a far more meticulous fashion: one by one, with gunshots to the back of the head, the investigators said. Of the 123 victims, 95 were children, 88 of them no older than 12.
In another tent, Mark Smith, the team’s archaeological field director, stood before a computer screen and demonstrated how researchers had reduced the tragedy to digitized data to aid prosecutors in constructing a precise narrative of those final gruesome minutes.
He went through several different graphic renderings of a mass grave associated with the Shiite uprising: one showed the outlines of all the bodies, others the bodies color-coded by age range, the number of gunshots they suffered and whether they were wearing blindfolds or had their hands bound.
Those maps help investigators analyze how the victims were marched in, where the gunmen were standing, the trajectory of the bullets and how the bodies fell. “We’re looking for patterns,” Mr. Smith said.
Several yards away, in the Cultural Objects Laboratory, Ariana Fernández, a cultural anthropologist from Costa Rica, studied the clothes and artifacts found on the bodies in an effort to draw further clues about their identities and their fates.
Mannequins dressed in recovered clothing populate the laboratory, giving it the look of a wardrobe workshop. On a large plywood board, Ms. Fernández had laid out the clothing that Case No. 19 and Case No. 20 were wearing when they were murdered.
“You take them from the ground, you lift them up and they’re individuals again,” she said. “It humanizes them.”
The researchers have given some of the victims nicknames: Quinn — after the Bob Dylan song “Quinn the Eskimo” — for a boy who was found in a ski jacket with a fluffy hood; Pochahontas for a girl wearing a shirt with a beaded design; and Gray Guy, Brown Guy and the Blue Man.
“It’s not a deliberate thing,” explained Kerrie Grant, an archaeologist on the mass graves team. “We get attached to them. It gives them some of their humanity back.”
There was also “The Little Girl With the Ball.” She was found in Nineveh 2 with a red-and-white ball in her hands. “You spend enough time with these individuals, you really want to see them go home,” Mr. Trimble said.
But it is a cold reality of the job that the team’s mandate — and budget — do not encompass the return of the victims’ remains to their home villages.
That work, they hope, will be taken up by other organizations if the violence eases. But so far no group has come forward, and until then, the hundreds exhumed by the mass graves team will have to speak for the tens of thousands of others who remain buried.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting for this article.
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DVD Burner
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Ugly Dougly
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Maybe it's more like France's earlier involvement in Vietnam, driving out the Japanese and not going home after they wore out their welcome.Apollonaris Zeus wrote:Yes Iraq isn't Vietnam because the idiology is different.
Vietnam was about one's country's revolution and no such revolution was taking place in Iraq.
But the only thing in common was the lies and deception propaganda associated with our government.
AIIZ
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chiefdanfox
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Apollonaris Zeus
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Apollonaris Zeus
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from DemocracyNow.org
Study: Ethnic Cleansing Was Primary Factor in Reducing Iraq Violence
A new study out of UCLA has concluded that ethnic violence—not the Bush administration’s surge—was the primary factor in reducing violence in Iraq. UCLA geographers studied how much light was being generated at night in different neighborhoods of Baghdad. Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned. Meanwhile, the use of lights at night remained constant or increased during the surge in largely Shiite neighborhoods. Co-author Thomas Gillespie said, “If the surge had truly ‘worked,’ we would expect to see a steady increase in night-light output over time. Instead, we found that the night-light signature diminished in only certain neighborhoods, and the pattern appears to be associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing.â€
Study: Ethnic Cleansing Was Primary Factor in Reducing Iraq Violence
A new study out of UCLA has concluded that ethnic violence—not the Bush administration’s surge—was the primary factor in reducing violence in Iraq. UCLA geographers studied how much light was being generated at night in different neighborhoods of Baghdad. Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned. Meanwhile, the use of lights at night remained constant or increased during the surge in largely Shiite neighborhoods. Co-author Thomas Gillespie said, “If the surge had truly ‘worked,’ we would expect to see a steady increase in night-light output over time. Instead, we found that the night-light signature diminished in only certain neighborhoods, and the pattern appears to be associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing.â€