The Terrorist Insurgency?
The following excerpts are from Vice President Cheney’s recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute:
“…and the terrorists hope to overturn Iraq’s democratic government and return that country to the rule of tyrants. The terrorists believe that by controlling an entire country, they will be able to target and overthrow other governments in the region.”
“…those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and other free nations be better off, or worse off, with Zarqawi, bin Laden, and Zawahiri in control of Iraq?”
“It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone. In fact such a retreat would convince the terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder and blackmail. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America.”
“Our forces will keep going after the terrorists, and continue training the Iraqi military, so that Iraqis can eventually take the lead in their country’s security and our men and women can come home.”
“But this nation has made a decision: We will not retreat in the face of brutality, and we will never live at the mercy of tyrants or terrorists.”
Cheney’s entire line of argument suggests that we are fighting a terrorist insurgency in Iraq. Yet the reality is entirely different. A recent report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concludes that 90% of the “insurgents” are Iraqi’s.
“…and the terrorists hope to overturn Iraq’s democratic government and return that country to the rule of tyrants. The terrorists believe that by controlling an entire country, they will be able to target and overthrow other governments in the region.”
“…those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and other free nations be better off, or worse off, with Zarqawi, bin Laden, and Zawahiri in control of Iraq?”
“It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone. In fact such a retreat would convince the terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder and blackmail. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America.”
“Our forces will keep going after the terrorists, and continue training the Iraqi military, so that Iraqis can eventually take the lead in their country’s security and our men and women can come home.”
“But this nation has made a decision: We will not retreat in the face of brutality, and we will never live at the mercy of tyrants or terrorists.”
Cheney’s entire line of argument suggests that we are fighting a terrorist insurgency in Iraq. Yet the reality is entirely different. A recent report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concludes that 90% of the “insurgents” are Iraqi’s.
The Iraqi insurgency is, for the most part, NOT made up of terrorist. They are not foreigners infiltrating borders. They are Iraqi citizens who believe we are aggressors and occupiers and want us the hell out of their country!!
Sen. Murtha and others know that leaving Iraq now will immediately end the "insurgency" because the "insurgents" are not terrorists trying to establish a sanctuary to plot and stage terrorist attacks. That is wartime propaganda brought to you by the same people who lied in order to secure a U.S. presence in Iraq to begin with. The same people who, without a shred of remaining credibility, are lashing out at anyone who suggests a better way of dealing with this nightmare. The Iraqi people do not consider us liberators. They consider us unwelcome aggressors who are plundering their country. It is becoming increasingly apparent that they are correct.
If we do not even have the backing of the people we are supposedly "liberating", our continued presence in Iraq puts our foreign policy and national security in further and deeper jeopardy with each passing day.
Sen. Murtha and others know that leaving Iraq now will immediately end the "insurgency" because the "insurgents" are not terrorists trying to establish a sanctuary to plot and stage terrorist attacks. That is wartime propaganda brought to you by the same people who lied in order to secure a U.S. presence in Iraq to begin with. The same people who, without a shred of remaining credibility, are lashing out at anyone who suggests a better way of dealing with this nightmare. The Iraqi people do not consider us liberators. They consider us unwelcome aggressors who are plundering their country. It is becoming increasingly apparent that they are correct.
If we do not even have the backing of the people we are supposedly "liberating", our continued presence in Iraq puts our foreign policy and national security in further and deeper jeopardy with each passing day.
posted by Anonymous at 10:35 AM
6 Comments:
"90% of the “insurgents” are Iraqi’s. They are NOT terrorist. They are not foreigners infiltrating borders. They are Iraqi citizens who believe we are aggressors and occupiers and want us the hell out of their country!!"
Where did you get this information from?
Okay, so let's assume you're right in your assumption that all of our foes in Iraq are Iraqi's. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that if they just held their ground and kept quiet, we'd give control to the new Iraqis and leave? Why do they continue to fight us? If they just leave us alone we'll have that false sense of security and give over control to them and they win... (go figure!) Maybe it's because they aren't Iraqis at all and look to thwart our efforts in the region.
Where did I get my information?
"A new report suggests that at least 90 percent of insurgents in Iraq are Iraqi. The study from the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) states that even though "no one knows the number of active and part-time insurgents, paid agents and sympathisers," they estimate there to be around 30,000 insurgents in Iraq, of whom some 3,000 are foreign fighters."
AND EVEN BEFORE THE WAR:
"Two reports by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior analysts that pools assessments from across the nation's intelligence community, warned Bush in January 2003, two months before the invasion, that the conflict could spark factional violence and an anti-U.S. insurgency"
WANT MORE?
Military and civilian intelligence agencies repeatedly warned prior to the invasion that Iraqi insurgent forces were preparing to fight and that their ranks would grow as other Iraqis came to resent the U.S. occupation and organize guerrilla attacks (USA Today 10/24/05)
"U.S. planning may have underestimated how much Iraqis blamed the United States, rather than Saddam, for their prewar misery." [Chief U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer]
Even Saddam predicted this:
the Iraqi dictator, Duelfer wrote, "believed that the Iraqi people would not stand to be occupied or conquered by the United States and would resist — leading to an insurgency."
So not only is their TONS of evidence bolstering my "claims" - the evidence was available WAY before the invasion. It was instead ignored. Now, 2100 dead American's later its' "oops, sorry" and "gotta keep fighting the terrorists".
Come on man, use your brain. As for the rest of your comment, your logic is as flawed as Cheney's. Iraqi's don't trust at all that we will leave. They believe Iraq is just a beach-head for a further western conquest of the Middle East. Further, the insurgency has obviously been effective else the U.S. wouldn't be discussing a wirthdrawl timetable. Your "lay low until they leave" argument makes no sense.
Good assessment draino, but there's more. To anyone with any understanding of the religious and ethnic factions involved, Iraq would have been the last country in the middle east to impose a democratic experiment. Only the ivory-towered neo-clown elitists (war architects who barely sullied their noses in their own schoolyard playgrounds let alone put on a uniform to serve their country) could come up with a Kumbaya teary-eyed fantasyland democratic-footprint plan such as this. The only part of which to come true so far is control of the oil and huge profits for halliburton from American taxpayer monies. One and a half billion dollars a week so that the Iraqis can have free health care. I don't have fucking health care, why should they.
If I were president I would have sent a 150,000 troops to Afghanistan to get bin Laden and Al Qaeda instead of the twenty thousand these fools sent, holding back 130,000 covertly for Iraq--I would have let the inspectors finish their job like they repeatedly asked to do; kept Saddam and Iraq contained and thusly IRAN; spent $30 billion sealing our borders; and knowing (now) how the Republicans like to just print their own fucking money, I'd have given every American citizen $1 million dollars and still saved the country over $100 billion and counting. You should've voted for me and not the drunken coward and darth vader.
Instead, the top three American oil companies made their biggest profits ever in the last quarter (Exxon gets $10 billion in profits for the last three months-- that's 10 billion), Hallibuton is getting, what is it $80 billion by now? And our borders are wide-fucking-open. I mean there is no border, it's just dirt.
And we're in a fucking QUAGMIRE--did I mention that? This was all known at the beginning. We knew all this would happen and that these fuckers were lying and fucking things up right from the start. These incompetent bungling criminals have now threatened all of our lives with their greed and lies.
I personally want this war (a routing followed by an occupation, not really a war) to go on until the 2008 elections--it could easily do that anyway. I want Bush to be our whipping boy and I want us to have plenty of time to jail Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Feith, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Pearle, Libby, Rove and the rest of the scum involved in this. These are criminals and traitors to America, and anyone who defends them with lies and disinformation are also guilty of treason.
The way out is to have a staged withdrawal--as the clowns will make appearances of doing before the 2006 elections to get as many mindless cattle as they can to vote for them, but it won't have any effect. The killing will go on. There is more than just Iraqis involved, we create more terrorists everyday than we can kill and the chance of an Iranian or Al Qaeda inspired civil war once we pull out is great. There is no defeating the insurgency while we remain. but this has all been said. So I vote that we make allusions to forcing the administration to pull out, while we use the time to press for impeachment and actual jail time.
stevie
You've made an incorrect stretch of logic. Simply because all of the insurgents are Iraqi, that does not mean all Iraqi's are insurgents. These insurgents live in Iraq, but they are not Iraqi. They've their own "government", and they are killing Iraqi citizens. If the vast majority of Iraqi citizens were angry, gun-toting militia types, the insurgents would all be dead. Unfortunately, most Iraqis are peaceful people. The good always die first.
Terrorism: "The intentional use of violence against non-combatants (civilians) to achieve political or military objectives"
Notice that nothing in that definition says what country you're from, which borders you crossed, or which side you're fighting on. Dividing the insurgency into "Sadaamists, Rejectionists and Terrorists", or any similar pattern is sheer Alice In Wonderland nonsense. Any party to the conflict in Iraq may in fact "be terrorist" in any particular action. Terrorism is an illegal tactic - not a nationality or a group. People need to learn to examine the words they use, and what they mean. Words determine thoughts. Thoughts determine actions. Once you start a proposition by misusing language, you spin off into illusions and delusions. This is particularly dangerous when it involves 150,000 Americans armed to the teeth in someone else's country. What the hell are you guys talking about? I am shocked that so many Americans - in this blog and including the media - blindly adopt categories and formulations that have been created for cynical manipulation.
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