J Thomas

No ..... I don't agree with you .... I think what is missing is the number if Iraqis killed in those attacks compared to coallition forces.

 

By looking at the reports, one can easily conclude that these actions are targeting Iraqis before americans ... or american bases and routes.

 

It becomes clear that the aim of the insurgents is not the americans but the new Iraq. ....

You could be right. However, it says "all attacks" and it's from a western security outfit. Could they mean "all attacks against americans"? Or possibly "all attacks against this security company"?

I see the statistic that there are about 90 attacks a day on coalition troops now. That would be about 2700 attacks in a month, conservatively call it 2200 to account for the reduced number last month. The map claims to have one dot per attack and there aren't nearly 2000 dots there, are there?

Kerry and Bush are both american politicians. They try to say things that will look good to american voters, and they try to make each other look bad.

I am not clear about the place of the american military in iraq. I get the strong impression that they don't do much to protect iraqis from violent criminals, or from terrorists or insurgents. What they can do is to keep insurgents from declaring that they are the local government. If insurgents take over an iraqi city and kill the politicians who oppose them and say that they're running the city, the US military can go in and kill them unless they run away, and then appoint a new local government. And we can kill iraqis who shoot at us, perhaps killing innocent civilians also.

I get the strong impression that the US army doesn't really understand iraqis, and mostly doesn't speak the language, and it's hard for us to do a lot of good because of that. So what Bush and Kerry both want to do is to train iraqi soldiers and police to maintain security, and then pull the US soldiers out -- either out of iraq completely or into isolated bases where they don't have much interaction with iraqis.

Also, if iraq could be policed by iraqis then the US military would be free to invade iraq. I'm not sure whether the Bush administration still intends to do that or not.

Americans look at iraq mainly in terms of the US military. We look at US casualties (we usually only hear about the deaths, not about the badly wounded). We look at iraqi casualties. (The military said they wouldn't do "body counts" but when US soldiers get killed americans don't feel so bad if 10 times as many iraqis also are reported killed, and we can assume they were all insurgents.) From what I hear the US military is not doing particularly well in iraq just now. We are getting around 90 attacks a day when not so long ago it was only 20 attacks a day. The military announced that there were no-go zones where they didn't go except in large numbers looking for a fight. They quoted Fallujah, Samara, Baquba and Sadr City, and implied that there were many more. Recently they went into Samara in large numbers looking for a fight, and the insurgents ran away, and now we're saying Samara is pacified but I'm not clear what it will take to pull out the thousands of US troops and still be able to do small US patrols there.

US tactics for taking cities from insurgents are modeled on israeli tactics which are themselves modeled on nazi tactics. We don't hesitate to destroy a large building to kill one sniper. US/israeli tactics do minimise casualties to the attackers. To my way of thinking this would be a good reason for an insurgency to stay hidden and not announce that they have taken over cities. What good does it to them to announce it and get their city blown up?

When you look at it from an iraqi perspective it doesn't look so bad. But from an american military view it looks very bad. We can only hope that the insurgents are killing themselves in large numbers trying to interfere with the american elections, and after the elections they will be mostly killed off. But then, we have made that claim repeatedly. We thought they were killing themselves off for Saddam, but we caught Saddam and it got worse. We thought they were killing themselves to disrupt the handover to Allawi and afterward it got worse. Now we say it's the american elections, and after that we could say it's the iraqi elections. Our military can keep killing insurgents for a long time as long as the supplies keep flowing, but does it really help iraq?

I think maybe both candidates hope that an elected iraqi government will ask for US troops to leave. Then we could pull the troops out without dishonor. But they can't say that because it wouldn't sound good to american voters. So they come up with peculiar claims about what they would do, hoping that they won't have to keep their word or break it.

I would like to ask iraqis -- do US troops do more good than harm in iraq?

Would an elected government be likely to ask that US troops leave? How much training would an iraqi army/police need before the government would do that? (There's reason to hope that iraqi military units would be more spirited and competent fighting for a real iraqi government than fighting for the US military. So their abilities might be better than they look now.)

There is a strong chance that a US government would stop sending reconstruction funds if the US military left iraq. It depends a lot on how it's done. If it looked like a mutual decision -- iraq is doing well now, US troops are no longer needed, our good friends thank us and say we can go now, then if iraq had difficulties later americans would have bitter disputes about whose fault it was. Say iraq got a government where religious figures were not irrelevant, we would fight about whether the US president made the iraqi government invite us out because he wanted out too early. If the iraqi government was a bit ruder about insisting we leave then it wouldn't be the President's fault that he had to keep his word and go. But we would likely be angry at the iraqi government and want to cut off aid. There might be some way to do it that avoids both issues, but I don't know what it would be.

Would it be worth losing US reconstruction aid to get rid of the US army? Or -- to repeat -- is the US military doing more good than harm in iraq? Another question -- is there a way the US military could do more good and less harm than it's doing now, that the US military might be competent to perform?

Have look at this flash demo by the Guardian

 

The Iraq Insurgency in September 2004

 

Move you mouse over the right legend.

That's very interesting. What's missing is a graph of where the american bases are and the supply routes to those bases.

I'm guessing that likely the attacks tend to come where americans and sunnis overlap.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/03/news/econo...dex.htm?cnn=yes

 

Employment rate is beating expectations!

Well, no. What has happened is that -- according to the polls -- a lot of people who used to be looking for work have given up looking. They only count as unemployed if the government worker calls them on the phone and asks them if they have a job and they say no, and then they get asked if they are actively looking for work and they say yes.

If they say they aren't trying to find a job, they aren't unemployed. The percentage of people who *do* have jobs has not gone up. And it's still down from when Bush became president. There were about a million more jobs then than there are now.

An Arab scholar thinks that going for Bush might be better from Arab prospectives.. The problem with such calls is that it is comming from a basic understanding that Arab should vote according to the Israeli-Palistine conflict.. While this might be an issue, there are so many other factors to be considered as being Americans from Arabic origin..

If palestine is your main concern, both candidates look so bad that it hardly matters which you pick.

We have seen what Bush did in the last 4 years, so it's completely reasonable to expect more of the same.

If I was voting based on palestine, I migbt vote for Kerry on the hope that he's lying about what he'd do.

Or I might vote for Nader knowing that he couldn't win, and hope that in a later election someone might try to get the votes that went to Nader this time.

For myself, as an american, I will vote against Bush. Jesus said to forgive him because he doesn't know what he's doing. I forgive him but I don't want him to keep doing it.

JThomas's

This looks plausible. What does it mean to you?

 

For me, It was not .. For an Arab that is fed by Aljezera like propaganda, it was kind of fully unexpected..

The Arab media keep telling us that the Jews are the one who brought Bush to power and that Bush is no more than a puppet in the hand of the Jews.. They are relying on this to say that all what Bush is doing in Iraq is no more than a a Jew agenda to destroy the Muslim world.

Now from this very credible poll and reports, seems to me that this is not true.. That Republicans , who might be willing to do their best to get the jews blessings, are not the Jews favorite.. On the contrary, Jews are publicly working so hard to move them away, that was the case in the last ellection and it is in this next one.. Seems it is historically always the case..

 

This would flag a lot of questions about the reasons.. While such questions might be important in America, for Arab what should be important is, why our Arab "Jezera like" are telling the other way..

I don't want to go into deep analysis and conspiracy theories, but I would like any fellow Arab to think about it.

That is why I did asked for comments. It is not the elections side , it is our side.. Are we so penetrated ? Are we foolish to this extent that we don't know what seems to be a very basic fact in American politics?

I used to ask some fellow Arab friends who lived in US for long time about such thing, I never got any such understanding.. They always though that the Jews are supporting both and would go for the winner.. This seems , according to the above as nonsense..

I see!

This is hard for americans to discuss. People think it is rude to discuss anything jewish if you are not jewish yourself.

The way I understand it, which might not be completely right, is that american jews tend to vote for democrats. American jews who are zionists will vote for whichever candidate gives more support to israel. And if you are running for office and your opponent does not support israel enough, you will get plenty of money to spend to get elected.

Most american politicians believe that if they don't give enough support to israel they will get TV stories saying they are bad for other reasons, and they will lose. Almost all republican and democrat politicians give total support to israel. So american zionists can usually vote for whichever they want for other reasons.

People say that about 2% of the american population is jewish. I think there are no good statistics about that. It is hard to measure. My sister married a jewish man and she goes to a Reform synagogue which is organised a lot like the christian Methodist church she attended as a child. Many jews would say she is not jewish though she says she is and her children are. Many people who say they are jewish are not religious. It is all confused. Peopls say that the jewish vote is particularly important for presidential elections because so many jews are in important states like New York and Florida. Maybe jewish voters are not as important as campaign money and what the media says. But anyone who says that there is much jewish influence on the media gets called antisemitic. When someone important says that, the media spends a lot of time calling them antisemitic, the media explains that no civilised person would say such a thing.

People say that there are a lot of christian voters who are zionists. The claim is that these people want the israelis to restore the temple because the christian book of Revelation says that the temple will be rebuilt in jerusalem before christ will return. Since they want christ to return and bring the end of the world as soon as possible, they want a strong israel to rebuild the temple. I have never met anyone in person who told me they believed this, though I have met a few on the internet. Probably people like that would refuse to talk to me. If they exist, they will vote republican as consistently as jews vote democrat.

I don't know how important zionists were in getting Bush elected. It is plausible they may have been important. Clinton had tried to make the israelis agree to a deal with the palestinians. He failed at that, but some zionists were angry that he tried. They might have worked against Gore because of that. Gore also took a strong zionist position, though.

I think if the zionists put Bush in they did not do so very effectively. He almost lost. A few votes from american citizens living in israel who mailed their votes to florida may have been important, but it could just as easily have been something else.

I would not be surprised if Al Jazeera reports american politics just as simply and wrongly as the american media report iraqi politics.

We hear that there is a strong movement in iraq to get a religious government like iran, but hardly any iraqis want that. I wonder, if so few iraqis want it why is it such a danger? Our media says that Al Sadr cannot be allowed into the government because he wants the US troops to leave and he wants a religious government like iran, and he is very unpopular. And I wonder, if he is unpopular why not let him run for office and lose?

We only hear about a few parties -- al Dawa, SCIRI, Allawi's party -- and we hear very little about what they want. Mostly we hear whether they're sunni/shia/kurd. Anybody who's Shia that we don't like gets accused of being controlled by the iranians. Maybe that is our equivalent of Al Jazeera saying who's controlled by the zionists.

For pro AlJazeera TV channel from Arabs and Muslims .... can you comment on this.

 

This is a new article on the same issue.

 

Jews overwhelmingly support Kerry

This looks plausible. What does it mean to you?

To me, it implies that republicans might someday reduce their support for zionism.

Traditionally voters who were most likely to oppose zionism tended strongly to be liberals, and democrats. They voted for Dem politicians who took a strong zionist stand because they preferred them on all other issues and typically the republican politicians did the same. Small numbers of antisemites voted republican for the same reasons.

If republicans can't get the jewish vote even when they bend over backwards with their heads between their thighs, perhaps someday they will court the moslem vote. They tend to need campaign money less then democrats, which would give them more freedom to do that.

So in 4 years or 6 years moslems may have better choices than Nader.

In the short run I hope Kerry wins. We know what to expect from Bush, we've seen him in action. There's reason to hope that Kerry is lying about what he will do, so we can't be sure about him. I'd rather vote for a small hope than for no hope.

Iran's radical Shia kakistocracy has been funding, supplying — and in Sadr's case operating — the insurgency in Shia Iraq ever since Coalition forces began massing to attack Iraq in 2002. According to one estimate, there are at least 30,000 Iranian-funded insurgents in Iraq.

Are you sure that iran is significantly backing Sadr? It's generally looked like iran was backing SCIRI far more than Sadr. Are they backing both?

Of course, given a US attack on the shrines it would make sense for iran to support whoever was against us.

It is tempting, and wrong, to believe this fight is not worth the risk. Young Americans will die there in as important as any other fight has been for Iraqi freedom.

It's hard for me to imagine it's worth the risk. Maybe I'm overestimating the risk? If a Shia consensus develops that american forces are unwelcome in iraq, we're going to feel *very unwelcome*. This could create that consensus. Wasn't it Badr brigades that were defending the shrines before? Why did they give them to Mahdi to defend instead of defend them from Mahdi army? Whatever the reason, they won't like it that we stage a foxhunt there.

Suppose Sadr survives, and in january his party wins 10% of the seats in the assembly. What then? Would it be a giant setback for democracy? I don't see that it would. The people who vote for his party would be voting for somebody if he wasn't there -- probably somebody just as anti-american and pro-religion. 10% is a powerful voting block but it isn't enough to run a theocracy or block elections. Say it was 20%, would that be a disaster? 30%? If Sadr's party got 51% that would give him a great big say in government. But that's around 85% of the shia. Aren't Dawa and SCIRI going to get a lot of shia votes?

What'st he big deal here? Do you think no other fight for iraq freedom has been more important than this?

If we had somehow negotiated the cooperation of Ali al-Sistani in the year and a half since the Saddam regime fell, the fight wouldn't even be necessary.

Sistani has nothing to gain by collaborating with an occupying army. He demanded early elections and we sped up our schedule from snail-pace to tortoise-pace. Is this fight necessary? I don't see that it is, except maybe for the November elections.

If we had been able to bring other Islamic forces in to join the Coalition forces, this fight could have been theirs if it had to be fought at all.

Which islamic forces are you thinking of? They'd need to be shia, wouldn't they? I mean, if a bunch of fanatical catholics were holed up in Saint Peter's cathedral while the vatican was occupied by, say, the chinese, and the chinese were determined to root through the entire cathedral and kill every fanatic there, would it really help if they got a bunch of german lutherans to do the killing for them?

So, we'd want iranian forces in the coalition? It just wasn't in the cards.

This whole thing looks stupid. We built Sadr up by opposing him. If we'd just let Sadr say whatever he wanted, and mostly ignored him, he'd only be another unpopular thug.