Antiwar.com Blog

Mahdi Army guerillas appear to be making a concerted effort to destroy Iraqi police stations in hit and run attacks:

Police in this Euphrates river town, 10 miles south of Baghdad, called for help from American forces when they came under attack. But the Americans didn’t reach the town until about five hours after the attack, police Lt. Satpar Abdul-Reda said.

Abdul-Reda said the attackers arrived in seven cars, surrounded the station and opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. The 10 policemen inside were armed only with Kalashnikov rifles and pistols and fled the station after realizing they were outgunned, Abdul-Reda said.

The gunmen entered the building, rigged it with explosives and blew it up, the lieutenant said.

It was the fourth attack on police stations across the country in the past week. On June 5, gunmen killed seven policemen before blowing up the police station in Musayyib. The following day, gunmen believed loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr blasted a police station in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Al-Sadr’s followers overran a police station Thursday in Najaf and ransacked the building.

This is why it is ridiculous to say that a guerilla army is “defeated,” as Brigadier General Mark Hertling foolishly announced last week.

And they lead you on to war:

A Fake War in the Himalayas?

by Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI (IPS) – This week’s stunning confessions by two Indian soldiers that they helped stage fake encounters with Pakistani troops on Siachen, often called the world’s highest, coldest and costliest battlefield, has renewed calls for demilitarizing the Himalayan glacier.

On Monday, rifleman Shyam Bahadur Thapa told a military court that he not only demolished a fake “enemy-held” objective with a rocket launcher in August 2003 but also acted the part of a Pakistani soldier killed in the action as video cameras whirred away.

Thapa said he did this at the behest of a company commander, Maj. Surinder Singh. “He asked me to remove my jacket and cap and lie there (near the demolished objective).”

Thapa is one of four soldiers who have testified before a court of inquiry to say that they had been forced by their officers, including a colonel and two majors, to participate in fake military encounters on Siachen in August and September 2003.

“Obviously this scandal involves the top brass, perhaps even generals – there is no use victimizing middle-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers,” a well-known writer on military affairs, N. Kunju, told IPS in an interview.

Kunju, a former army man himself, is among analysts who believe that the whole Siachen conflict, now running into its 20th year, is actually a huge fraud being played on the Indian people by successive governments and one mirrored by the generals in military-dominated Pakistan.

Read the whole thing, but by no means ever doubt that your own government — wherever you may live — is on the up and up. Don’t be paranoid.

AP reports:

Addressing advice the White House got suggesting torture might be allowed for some terrorist interrogations, President Bush said Friday he ordered U.S. officials to act consistent with law and international treaties.

“What I authorized was staying within U.S. law,” Bush said at the conclusion of the G-8 summit meeting here. The president said he doesn’t recall seeing Justice Department advice about the conditions for such torture.

Asked repeatedly about it, Bush sidestepped a question about whether he thought torture was immoral, saying that his instructions were “to adhere to law. … We’re a nation of law” and “you might look at those laws.”

The direction he provided was to “conform to U.S. law” and to act consistent with international treaty obligations, Bush said.

Sounds a little on the nervously evasive side, doesn’t he? Almost as evasive as Ashcroft.

Gorbachev did.

Lew Rockwell comments:

I still remember the horrified faces of George H.W. Bush and his consigliere, James Baker, when the Berlin Wall came down. There followed a few bad years for the US superstate, with no foreign bogeyman to scare the American people into continued subservience.

From SignOnSanDiego:

The yellow ribbon tied around the tower of the County Administration Center has faded. Wind, rain and pollution, especially from last fall’s wildfires, have taken their toll on the salute to U.S. troops. County supervisors installed the 240-foot-long ribbon and bow during President Bush’s visit here on May 4, 2003. As the conflict in Iraq has dragged on, the decoration has turned more gray than yellow and screams to be either cleaned, replaced or removed.

It’s time for the bow to come down, agree supervisors Dianne Jacob and Greg Cox, who championed the tribute. While it would be great to display the mesh-fabric ribbon and bow until the last ship returns home, the decoration came with a life expectancy of about a year, Jacob notes, and some of our troops probably will be in Iraq for a long time to come. “We’re making plans to take it down on the 30th of June,” says Jacob, to coincide with the transfer of power to the Iraqis.

This reminds me of the days just after the WTC attack when the US looked like a giant pep rally with American flags everyplace that could possibly be plastered with a flag and little American antenna flags on car after car. A “patriot” at WarmongerRepublic once said this to me:

I have a flag on my car and yes it’s getting tattered. But I plan to keep it there till the day we get Osama. I don’t care if it’s the size of a tissue.

29 posted on 11/16/2001 1:27:01 PM PST by veronica

I wonder if it’s the size of a tissue yet?

All that “patriotic” fervor and “support the troops” enthusiasm somehow segued into 800+ dead Americans, thousands of dead Afghanis and Iraqis, billions of dollars squandered and tens of thousands of American soldiers who were told that all they had to do was cakewalk to Baghdad and they would then go home in time to be heroes in their home town Fourth of July Parades still roasting in Iraqi sandstorms in full body armor, getting attacked constantly. Afghanistan is ruled by warlords and producing bumper poppy crops, while Americans are still dying and killing there and Osama’s whereabouts are unknown, though he still manages to his convey his threats whenever he wants.

And the yellow ribbons fade and the flags, long turned to tattered rags, disappear.

Mea culpa. In yesterday’s column I referred to my dad as the only delegate at the 1980 Republican National Convention to vote against George H.W. Bush for vice president. Not true, he informed me; he was the first to announce he was going to do so, and the only delegate from his state to do it.

After this successful (albeit unintentional) foray into mythmaking, I’m now considering applying for work at the New York Times and the Weekly Standard.