General Concedes Failure in Baghdad

[Bronco_Beerslug]

So what will Bush's new plan be now?

--------------------------------------------------------
General concedes failure in Baghdad
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, October 20, 2006

In a confluence of grim official assessments of the war in Iraq, President Bush acknowledged that sectarian bloodletting in Baghdad could be compared to the Viet Cong's 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, and one of the top U.S. generals said the American military's two-month drive to crush the spiraling violence in the Iraqi capital had failed.

Such downbeat opinions, accompanied by reports of alarmingly high American casualties and unabated violence in Iraq, indicate that U.S. officials at the highest levels are rethinking the progress the United States is making in Iraq, experts said.

"What this suggests to me is that people in fairly senior levels are getting increasingly worried about what's going on," said Jeffrey White, an expert on military and security affairs at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"The increasing pessimism among serious analysts of the conflict is beginning to have an effect," said White, a former government intelligence analyst. "Policy makers are beginning to, if not accept the ultimate conclusions, then at least the main thrust of it: that we're not getting better, that the Iraqi government isn't working, that the Iraqi security forces are not standing up the way we would like them to."

Bush, who had rejected parallels between the fighting in Iraq and the Vietnam War, reconsidered his stance in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, saying that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman "could be right" in comparing the violence in Baghdad to the Tet offensive. "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election," Bush said.

On Jan. 30, 1968, communist North Vietnamese troops chose Tet, the Vietnamese lunar New Year holiday, to launch coordinated ground attacks against American bases and cities across South Vietnam. Many Vietnam historians call the offensive a turning point for the war in Vietnam as well as a prime reason why President Lyndon Johnson withdrew from his re-election campaign.

Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, said Thursday that "we do not think there has been a flip-over point" in Iraq. "We are going to continue pursuing victory aggressively," he said.

But on Thursday, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, announced that the American-led crackdown on violence in Baghdad had failed and said U.S. commanders were consulting with the Iraqi government on a new approach.

"It's clear that the conditions under which we started are probably not the same today, and so it does require some modifications of the plan," Caldwell said.

"The violence is indeed disheartening," he noted.

"Gen. Caldwell's admission is yet another indication that the enemy is winning," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a centrist think tank in Arlington, Va. "Commanders in the field are beginning to suggest a lack of success."

Caldwell's assessment came as the military announced the deaths of three U.S. troops in Iraq, raising the number of American military deaths in October to 74. Car bombs, mortar fire and small-arms fire across Iraq killed at least 66 people -- including the police commander of the volatile Sunni Anbar province, who was shot to death in his own house -- and wounded 175.

Growing frustration with the continuing drumbeat of bad news from Iraq has driven political debate in the final weeks of the congressional election campaign. As Americans have become increasingly opposed to the war, some of the staunchest Republican supporters of Bush's foreign policy, such as the influential Virginia Sen. John Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska have joined the Democrats in calling for a new Iraq strategy.

"This is not about Democrat versus Republican anymore," said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on Iraq and the senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy think tank. "It's serious, senior people across the political spectrum saying this strategy has failed."

Richard Haass, a former Bush administration foreign policy official, said Thursday that the situation is reaching a "tipping point" both in Iraq and in U.S. politics. "More of essentially the same is going to be a policy that very few people are going to be able to support," said Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that the administration's current Iraq strategy "has virtually no chance of succeeding."

CONT

[Barry Ramey]

Wow, they may need to change strategy. I'm sure that's never happened before in wars.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Barry Ramey

Wow, they may need to change strategy. I'm sure that's never happened before in wars.

Stay the course .......... May need to change strategy .........****ing brilliant , been holloring that for 4 years now , and you just pick up on it ......... ****ing brilliant

[Play2win]

Especially since it is not a "War", it is an "Occupation"

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Barry Ramey

Wow, they may need to change strategy. I'm sure that's never happened before in wars.

This isn't a "war" it's a political maneuver gone bad, REALLY bad. And if you would have read the Bush link you would have seen that Bush STILL refuses to change tactics.

[Rohirrim]

In order that the U.S. never find itself in this position again, I propose that we institute a set of rules of engagement for future adversarial situations. I suggest the following guidelines:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

In order that the U.S. never find itself in this position again, I propose that we institute a set of rules of engagement for future adversarial situations. I suggest the following guidelines:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

I propose we hold Bush, Cheney, Rove and the other architects of the Iraq invasion and disregarding the U.S. Constitution responsible for their actions.
Hopefully, this will start happening in a matter of a few short months.

[Stuck In Texas]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

In order that the U.S. never find itself in this position again, I propose that we institute a set of rules of engagement for future adversarial situations. I suggest the following guidelines:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Careful, you're sounding like a Republican!
http://www.answers.com/topic/weinberger-doctrine

Actually, although I do support the war in Iraq, we have never had enough troops to maintain the peace or even to hold areas once we clean out enemy fighters. I don't understand the reluctance to do it. There was a great opinion piece by a retired officer who says that today's military and civilian leaders are so worried about political correctness that they have forgotten how to wage war. It isn't pretty.

Actually... as I was typing this, I found it. Here it is. I couldn't agree more with his point.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10182006...ers.htm?page=0

[Play2win]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

I propose we hold Bush, Cheney, Rove and the other architects of the Iraq invasion and disregarding the U.S. Constitution responsible for their actions.
Hopefully, this will start happening in a matter a few short months.

When the Commander In Chief puts the security of the nation at risk for political gain, it (should be) an impeachable offense.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by DS49

When the Commander In Chief puts the security of the nation at risk for political gain, it (should be) an impeachable offense.

Exactly.

Congressional expert warns Iraq is near "full collapse" and Baghdad government "powerless" 10/22

http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=5568130&nav=2FH5

House Intelligence Committee suspends Democrat staffer's access to classified info after leak of "secret" that Iraq is a freaking disaster 10/22

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/wa...n/21intel.html

Armitage, former top Bush official who planned war, calls for withdrawal 10/22

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/20/...aq-withdrawal/

[bendog]

Well, we had that Rohirrim, but for some unknown reason Sec of State, Colin Powell, decided to toss out the Wienberger/Powell doctrine and the Pentagon, which is filled with guys who served in Vietnam, chose to not tell BushJR that this was wrong. Or they did, and Rumsfeld and JR said, 'do it anyway.' And that leads us back to Colin Powell.

[clarker]

Originally Posted by bendog

Well, we had that Rohirrim, but for some unknown reason Sec of State, Colin Powell, decided to toss out the Wienberger/Powell doctrine and the Pentagon, which is filled with guys who served in Vietnam, chose to not tell BushJR that this was wrong. Or they did, and Rumsfeld and JR said, 'do it anyway.' And that leads us back to Colin Powell.

Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" says it is the second. Powell warned them, they ignored it. But in fairness Powell didn't push to hard, at least accorrding to Woodward's book. Powell didn't think it was his place to push to hard because he was Sec of State and not Defense.

IMO, Powell should have pushed harder, but in the end it is the President and the Sec. of Defense who have the final say in the war plan. It was their call to make and they blew it.

[bendog]

I had always thought Powell would fall on his sword before he ever let the Army be aWagmired again. But, he did the dog and pony show at the UN. Remember the "mobile biological weapons labs."

http://middleeastreference.org.uk/iraqweaponsb.html

Secretary Powell, 5 February 2003: "One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents. [...]. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War. Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000. The source was an eye witness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents. He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again. [...] His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources. A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers. A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars. Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier. We have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. [...] As shown in this diagram, these factories can be concealed easily, either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and rail cars along Iraq's thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking them in a garage or warehouse or somewhere in Iraq's extensive system of underground tunnels and bunkers. We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of-there may be more-but perhaps 18 that we know of."

State Department, 27 February 2003: "Multiple sources confirm the existence of mobile units producing biological weapons, which Iraq denies."


Evaluation. Much of the speculation about Iraq's mobile production facilities began from the statement from Lt. Gen. Amer Al-Saadi that the creation of such facilities was once considered. However, he - and the Iraqi government - have denied that any mobile biological weapon agents facilities have ever been built. Iraq did have 47 mobile storage tanks participating in its biological weapons programme; UNSCOM has accounted for the destruction of 24 of these tanks, but its January 1999 report (Appendix III) notes that the unaccounted for tanks "can be used for long-term storage of agent under controlled conditions or modified to function as fermentors suitable for the production of BW agent". However, there has been no independent confirmation that any tanks have been modified in this way.

Much of the further alleged information about Iraq's facilities has come from defectors from Iraq, who claim to have witnessed such facilities: four such defectors are described in Secretary Powell's statement of 5 February 2003. This is a notoriously unreliable source.

The claims of the first defector described by Powell are perhaps the least credible. Raymond Zilinskas, a microbiologist and former U.N. weapons inspector (now director of Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies), was reported in the Washington Post as saying that a 24-hour production cycle was insufficient for creating significant amounts of pathogens such as anthrax.

"You normally would require 36 to 48 hours just to do the fermentation. The short processing time seems suspicious to me. [..] The only reason you would have mobile labs is to avoid inspectors, because everything about them is difficult. We know it is possible to build them -- the United States developed mobile production plants, including one designed for an airplane -- but it's a big hassle. That's why this strikes me as a bit far-fetched."

The Washington Post further reported that:

"Zilinskas and other experts said the schematic presented by Powell as an example of Iraq's mobile labs was theoretically workable but that turning the diagram into a functioning laboratory posed enormous challenges -- such as how to dispose of large quantities of highly toxic waste."

"Despite Defectors' Accounts, Evidence Remains Anecdotal", by Joby Warrick, Washington Post (6 February 2003).

The second source seems to be Adnan Saeed al-Haideri, whose standing is discussed above. It seems that he did not make any claims about mobile facilities in his first press conferences - none of the reports on those press conferences mention mobile facilities. Instead, he only began to refer to them in mid-2002, some six months after his first accounts. This would automatically cast some suspicion on the reliability of the new information that he is now providing.

Hans Blix has warned against attributing significance to UNMOVIC's inability to find any mobile facilities:

"We do go around and we check into industries, chemical industries, for instance, or pharmaceutical industries, into military installations. And so we can check a good deal. But you cannot check in every nook and corner of a large country. Above all, there's difficulty of course in finding things underground or anything that is mobile."

News Hour with Jim Lehrer, 19 December 2002

However, in his 7 March 2003 statement to the Security Council, he gave an account of investigations that have taken place:

"Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities has so far been found. Iraq is expected to assist in the development of credible ways to conduct random checks of ground transportation."

Key post-war readings:

Central Intelligence Agency, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants", 28 May 2003.
Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett, "Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs': Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs", The Observer, 8 June 2003.
Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff, "Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds", The Observer, 15 June 2003.
Douglas Jehl, "Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms", The New York Times, 9 August 2003.

And, then we get loons like LeftFieldBolt posting on and on 'but maybe bushii didn't know; surely he didn't; he just couldn't have. Bull****. Powell's one defense is maybe, just maybe, he didn't know that the "intelligence" Bush/Runny/Tenent were selling was from the bogus defectors. But what was happening was bush was telling them to cherrypick. Don't go with Blix, go with Chalabi and his guys. Did Powell get sandbagged? Maybe.... but the Dept of state had it's own intelligence, and they seemed more skeptical, and more in line with the lower level CIA analysists.

[clarker]

Originally Posted by bendog

I had always thought Powell would fall on his sword before he ever let the Army be aWagmired again. But, he did the dog and pony show at the UN. Remember the "mobile biological weapons labs."

http://middleeastreference.org.uk/iraqweaponsb.html

Secretary Powell, 5 February 2003: "One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents. [...]. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War. Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000. The source was an eye witness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents. He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again. [...] His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources. A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers. A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars. Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier. We have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. [...] As shown in this diagram, these factories can be concealed easily, either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and rail cars along Iraq's thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking them in a garage or warehouse or somewhere in Iraq's extensive system of underground tunnels and bunkers. We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of-there may be more-but perhaps 18 that we know of."

State Department, 27 February 2003: "Multiple sources confirm the existence of mobile units producing biological weapons, which Iraq denies."


Evaluation. Much of the speculation about Iraq's mobile production facilities began from the statement from Lt. Gen. Amer Al-Saadi that the creation of such facilities was once considered. However, he - and the Iraqi government - have denied that any mobile biological weapon agents facilities have ever been built. Iraq did have 47 mobile storage tanks participating in its biological weapons programme; UNSCOM has accounted for the destruction of 24 of these tanks, but its January 1999 report (Appendix III) notes that the unaccounted for tanks "can be used for long-term storage of agent under controlled conditions or modified to function as fermentors suitable for the production of BW agent". However, there has been no independent confirmation that any tanks have been modified in this way.

Much of the further alleged information about Iraq's facilities has come from defectors from Iraq, who claim to have witnessed such facilities: four such defectors are described in Secretary Powell's statement of 5 February 2003. This is a notoriously unreliable source.

The claims of the first defector described by Powell are perhaps the least credible. Raymond Zilinskas, a microbiologist and former U.N. weapons inspector (now director of Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies), was reported in the Washington Post as saying that a 24-hour production cycle was insufficient for creating significant amounts of pathogens such as anthrax.

"You normally would require 36 to 48 hours just to do the fermentation. The short processing time seems suspicious to me. [..] The only reason you would have mobile labs is to avoid inspectors, because everything about them is difficult. We know it is possible to build them -- the United States developed mobile production plants, including one designed for an airplane -- but it's a big hassle. That's why this strikes me as a bit far-fetched."

The Washington Post further reported that:

"Zilinskas and other experts said the schematic presented by Powell as an example of Iraq's mobile labs was theoretically workable but that turning the diagram into a functioning laboratory posed enormous challenges -- such as how to dispose of large quantities of highly toxic waste."

"Despite Defectors' Accounts, Evidence Remains Anecdotal", by Joby Warrick, Washington Post (6 February 2003).

The second source seems to be Adnan Saeed al-Haideri, whose standing is discussed above. It seems that he did not make any claims about mobile facilities in his first press conferences - none of the reports on those press conferences mention mobile facilities. Instead, he only began to refer to them in mid-2002, some six months after his first accounts. This would automatically cast some suspicion on the reliability of the new information that he is now providing.

Hans Blix has warned against attributing significance to UNMOVIC's inability to find any mobile facilities:

"We do go around and we check into industries, chemical industries, for instance, or pharmaceutical industries, into military installations. And so we can check a good deal. But you cannot check in every nook and corner of a large country. Above all, there's difficulty of course in finding things underground or anything that is mobile."

News Hour with Jim Lehrer, 19 December 2002

However, in his 7 March 2003 statement to the Security Council, he gave an account of investigations that have taken place:

"Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities has so far been found. Iraq is expected to assist in the development of credible ways to conduct random checks of ground transportation."

Key post-war readings:

Central Intelligence Agency, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants", 28 May 2003.
Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett, "Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs': Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs", The Observer, 8 June 2003.
Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff, "Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds", The Observer, 15 June 2003.
Douglas Jehl, "Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms", The New York Times, 9 August 2003.

And, then we get loons like LeftFieldBolt posting on and on 'but maybe bushii didn't know; surely he didn't; he just couldn't have. Bull****. Powell's one defense is maybe, just maybe, he didn't know that the "intelligence" Bush/Runny/Tenent were selling was from the bogus defectors. But what was happening was bush was telling them to cherrypick. Don't go with Blix, go with Chalabi and his guys. Did Powell get sandbagged? Maybe.... but the Dept of state had it's own intelligence, and they seemed more skeptical, and more in line with the lower level CIA analysists.

As Powell himself has said that U.N. Speech is not his finest hour to put it kindly.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Your tax dollars at work, Bush supporters...

More than half-billion in Iraq aid stolen

Mon Oct 23, 10:33 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq has been stolen by people running the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, a television network has reported.

Citing Iraqi investigators, CBS News said Sunday the United States and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom have fled the country.

An investigation conducted by the "60 Minutes" program has also turned up audio recordings of a suspect who seems to be discussing the transfer of 45 million dollars to the account of a top political adviser to the interim defense minister of Iraq, the report said.

"We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the UK or any of the surrounding Arab countries," Ali Allawi, Iraq's former finance minister, told the program.

"The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar," continued Allawi, who left his post when a new Iraqi government was formed earlier this year.

"And if they are brought to trial, it will cast a very disparaging light on those people who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and authority," he said.

One of the major suspects in the case is Ziad Cattan, who was in charge of military procurement at a time when the ministry of defense went on a 1.2-billion-dollar buying spree, CBS News said.

Allawi estimates that between 750 million and 800 million dollars of that money was stolen.

Meanwhile, Judge Radhi al-Radhi, head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, which investigates official corruption, said a lot of the money that was not stolen was spent on outdated, useless equipment.

Cattan, whom "60 Minutes" found in Paris and who was recently convicted in absentia in Iraq for squandering public funds, denied any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, audio recordings obtained by CBS News reveal Cattan talking to an associate in Amman, Jordan, in 2004 about Iraqi funds and payoffs to Iraqi officials.

One possible payoff the recordings allude to is the transfer of 45 million dollars to the account of a top political adviser to the defense minister, a man who is also identified on the recordings as a representative of the president and the prime minister of the interim government, the report said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061023...n_061023143355

But hey - at least your tax dollars weren't spent on some "wasteful social program," right?

[fido]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

In order that the U.S. never find itself in this position again, I propose that we institute a set of rules of engagement for future adversarial situations. I suggest the following guidelines:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Your guidelines are quite plausible, why not? They can't be any worse than what we have now. Good suggestion

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Another admission of graft in Iraq...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6076834.stm

Wow, a lot of people are happy if their 401Ks accumulate a few grand. Not in Iraq.

There you steal about a billion earmarked for equipping the army. The only hole in this story is a trail of the kickbacks.

Wonder if Cheney, et al, have Swiss accounts?

Swiss accounts and Paraguayan getaways. Priceless

"More than 1,000 corruption cases involving more than $7bn."

Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideaway

Tom Phillips in Cuiab
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian

Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next door must come fairly low on the list.

Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...928928,00.html

This may be one too many Nazis for the region... but maybe he already has an agreement?

Appropriate that he should join the likes of Somoza. He would be conveniently near his partners in crime who are in the Tri-Border area.

* The Cuban news service reports that George W. Bush has purchased 98,840 acres in Paraguay, near the Bolivian/Brazilian border.

* Jenna Bush paid a secret diplomatic visit to Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and U.S. Ambassador James Cason. There were no press conferences, no public sightings and no official confirmation of her 10-day trip which apparently ended this week.

* The Paraguayan Senate voted last summer to “grant U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction.”

* Immediately afterwards, 500 heavily armed U.S. troops arrived with various planes, choppers and land vehicles at Mariscal Estigarribia air base, which happens to be at the northern tip of Paraguay near the Bolivian/Brazilian border. More have reportedly arrived since then.

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/geo...too-208549.php

Much, much more at link including this:

We’ve been directed to yet another parapolitical theory here at Rigorous Intuition, where it is reported that Rev. Moon bought 600,000 hectares — that’s 1,482,600 acres — in the same place: Chaco, Paraguay.

Another twist: The first story, from Paraguay, apparently refers to the senior George Bush as the owner of the 98.840 acres in Moon’s neighborhood.
Bush 41 was the first big shot politician to go prancing around with Rev. Moon in public. Especially in South America.