Did you know the Iraq war is over?

[justdrew]

I understand it is coming back from hiatus if they get a new show runner.

[barracuda]

The only American troops left on Jan 1 will be about 200 trainers attached to the US embassy's Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq, while 700 civilian trainers will help Iraqi forces train on purchased American military hardware purchased such as F-16 fighters and Abrams tanks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -Iraq.html

So at least one thousand or so US military + contractors (that you know of, via the Telegraph - okay) are still there "training" with tanks and jet fighters (beside the 16,000 US employees of the Bagdad embassy), people are still dying left and right, shooting and bombing continues unabated, probable massive CIA and other intelligence agency presence goes on, and you say the sort-of-declared war's sort of over?

Okay.

What would you call such a US mil-intel presence if it was in, say, some random African nation for instance? Peace?

[lupercal]

The only American troops left on Jan 1 will be about 200 trainers attached to the US embassy's Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq, while 700 civilian trainers will help Iraqi forces train on purchased American military hardware purchased such as F-16 fighters and Abrams tanks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -Iraq.html

So at least one thousand or so US military + contractors (that you know of, via the Telegraph - okay) are still there "training" with tanks and jet fighters (beside the 16,000 US employees of the Bagdad embassy), people are still dying left and right, shooting and bombing continues unabated, probable massive CIA and other intelligence agency presence goes on, and you say the sort-of-declared war's sort of over?

Okay.

200 military is what it says. As for the 16,000 embassy employees, let's read further down in that same article (from wikipedia - okay):

Staff drawdown

The embassy formally opened over a year behind schedule in January of 2009 with a staff of over 16,000 people, mostly contractors, but including 2,000 diplomats. In February 2012, weeks after the final departure of US Military forces from Iraq, the State Department announced that the staff would be greatly reduced due to budget concerns and a re-evaluation of diplomatic strategy in Iraq, in light of the military withdrawal.

Since you take wikipedia so seriously do you believe it now?

[barracuda]

Are you trying to make me laugh?

[lupercal]

I understand it is coming back from hiatus if they get a new show runner.

Bingo.

[jingofever]

It doesn't need to be.

Then how do you tell that it's over? Has victory been formally declared? Did somebody win?

The Coalition of the Willing won but Iraq beat the spread. I lost 50 bucks on this damn war.

[Schmazo]

May I recommend these two?:

https://www.google.com/search?q=war+is+ ... e&ie=UTF-8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-s4GtUWcAI

[elfismiles]

So Lupercal, by your definition the secret bombing of Cambodia wasn't a war?

[lupercal]

So Lupercal, by your definition the secret bombing of Cambodia wasn't a war?

I'd say the Nixon-Kissinger secret carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1969-70, if that's what you're talking about, would be a good example of a war crime, or just a plain old crime, although that word doesn't really do it justice. But a declared or congressionally authorized use of force it wasn't, no, which I suppose adds to its criminality, although it would still be a moral crime either way, as most military actions are. But basically Cambodia was a spook action.

As for Iraq, I'm not the one splitting hairs, but it was huge public deployment of US forces, which had to be publicly and legally terminated, and thankfully was. But you wouldn't know it would you?



Incidentally I don't think you've voted yet so let me invite you to.

[elfismiles]

Well Luper ...

1 - i will never vote for the evil of two lessers
2 - in Tejas i have no right to vote except on an emachine
3 - i'm in frakking Texas - aint gonna matter who I vote for my idiot state brethren aren't supportin yer candidate

and

4 - it don't matter cuz both "choices" end with continued War of Terror Empire

[StarmanSkye]

I will NEVER forgive my so-called American fellow-American-citizens let alone my whorish venal thoroughly repugnant 'leaders' or the war-addicted MIC corporatocracy-aided foreign policy industry of Imperialist domination, the first for accomodating & excusing, the 2nd for 'authorizing' & endorsing, & the last for planning & implementing (for the worst of admittedly terrible self-serving malicious reasons) the invasion, occupation, genocide & destruction of Iraq, its mixed-ethnic peoples and the Iraq Civil Society -- constituting what some still hair=split as an 'authorized use of force' war-that-is-not-war but which cannot be explained-away as NOT an immense war-crime that was rushed-into by the scheming cabal of Bush-fronted neocons who mobilized an immense mass-media propaganda/psyop machine that disseminated outright lies, half-truths, frauds, gross exaggerations & hysterical outrage to associate Saddam's regime with the terrible and tragic PNAC-engineered self-inflicted False Flag attacks of 911.

Its scarcely possible to imagine a more cynical, morally-defective & hypocritically self-defeating crime of greater magnitude which will invariably have long-lasting disasterous unintended consequences that will corrode & fester within America's body-politic, giving future-generations the bitter incentive to hold the unthinking architects of America's venal foreign policies in profound contempt. t

THAT is the legacy of betrayal and exploitive treachery which Commander O'Bomba gladly inheritted as a fresh Nobel Peace Prize-brandishing newby faux-populist Prez-elect that for all we know was as constitutionally-illegitimate as the electronic-vote-fraud beneficiary W Bush was -- both defacto agents of the same ruling-class-elite, meta-transnational corporate, banking, Wall St., MIC and criminal-franchise gang-interests that brought them into the titular-facade positions of Executive power so they could oversee and help steer the US's next phase of anti-democratic conversion into a feudal-bureaucratic techno-corporatism on behalf of expanding American-driven globalist-agenda hegemony into the 21st century.

[8bitagent]

In the last year I've heard, even in the mainstream media, the meme that the US essentially conquered Iraq so Iran could have a new satellite country.

[Nordic]

It's going well.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world ... 691885.htm

Series of attacks kill 52 people in Iraq
English.news.cn 2012-09-09 23:16:26
by Jamal Hashim, Mustafa Sabah

BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- A series of bombs and gunfire attacks across Iraq on Sunday killed some 52 Iraqis and wounded more than 200 others, in what appeared to be an attempt by insurgent groups to destabilize the country and undermine confidence in the Iraqi government.

The deadliest attack in the day occurred near the city of Amara, some 365 km south of Baghdad, when two car bombs exploded at a marketplace near the shrine of Shiite Imam Ali al-Sharqi in the town that holds the name of the Imam, killing 18 people and wounding some 70 others.

Earlier in the morning, a suicide car bomber struck a crowd of security recruits at the compound of Iraq's Northern Oil Company ( NOC) near the city of Kirkuk, killing up to eight recruits and wounding 30 others.

The victims were signing up to be security members at the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service (FPS), which is an Iraqi paramilitary force tasked with site protection of Iraqi government facilities.

NOC is a state-owned company which is responsible for oil exports from northern Iraq.

Also in Kirkuk, a car bomb and a roadside bomb went off in succession before midday near Kirkuk University and a marketplace in central the city, killing seven people and wounding some 50 others.

The ethnically mix province of Kirkuk and its capital Kirkuk City, some 250 km north of Baghdad, are part of the disputed areas between the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkmen.

In southern Iraq, two roadside bombs went off almost simultaneously close to the French consular in Nassriyah in a main street in the central part of the city Nassriyah, some 375 km south of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding six.

Separately, a car bomb went off at a busy marketplace in the al- Qiblah district in the central part of the city of Basra, some 550 km south of Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding eight others.

In northern Iraq, a booby-trapped car parked outside the office of the Iraqi Turkman Front in the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital city of Mosul, killing two people and wounding seven.

The Turkmen is the third largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Arabs and Kurds.

In Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, seven people were wounded in a car bomb explosion in Bab-Sinjar district in western the city.

Meanwhile, a police chief and his bodyguard were killed and two policemen wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their convoy of police vehicles in Ishaqi area, some 90 km north of Baghdad.

The police chief was checking the site of a car bomb that was defused earlier by his force at the scene.

Three more car bombs and a roadside bombs separately exploded in north of Baghdad cities of Sulaiman Pek, Tuz-Khurmato and al- Riyadh, killing a total of three people and wounding 18 others.

Near Baghdad, three soldiers were shot dead when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in Abu Ghraib area, some 20 km west of Baghdad, prompting the Iraqi security forces to chase the attackers in the area and killed two of them and captured a third.

In a separate incident, three car bombs went off almost simultaneously in different places in Taji area, just north of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding seven others.

In addition, a string of sporadic attacks on Sunday wounded 16 people in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, which stretches from the eastern edges of Baghdad to the Iranian border east of the country.

Observers see that Sunday's attacks are part of an attempt by insurgent groups, including al-Qaida militant group, to show that they are capable of carrying out coordinated and high-profile attacks that could undermine the government's claims of providing security to Iraqis.

Al-Qaida front in Iraq frequently claimed the responsibility of most deadly attacks in the country, raising fears that the terrorist group could return to widespread violence, particularly, as Iraq is trying to avoid the spillover of violence from the ongoing conflict in the neighboring Syria.

Violence and sporadic high profile attacks are still common in the country despite the dramatic decrease of violence over the past few years.

Good thing we have, what, 50,000 boots on the ground there for "security". They'll be needed ...... forever. Or until the oil runs out, whichever comes first.

[ninakat]

I am proud to proclaim that I did not vote in this "poll."

[lupercal]

^ I dont mean this personally ninakat, because I have no idea what your personal situation might be, but as a general piece of advice to anyone dumb enough to make a virtue out of a) being clueless and b) not voting, I can only say,



Why, unless your trust fund is very secure and you basically don't give a shit about any other living creature on the planet, would you surrender your vote to the pathological right, which is exactly what you're doing when you fail to vote and exactly the effect they're hoping all their tacky propaganda will produce?