Valley of the Wolves: Iraq

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Brick Tamland: Excuse me, Veronica?
Veronica Corningstone: Yes? What is it, Brick?
Brick Tamland: I would like to extend to you an invitation to the pants party.
Veronica Corningstone: Excuse me?
Brick Tamland: [struggling] The... party. With the... with the pants. Party with pants?
Veronica Corningstone: Brick, are you saying that there's a party in your pants and that I'm invited?
Brick Tamland: That's it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The first three posts were very dogmatic and had *no* supporting facts, LCD.

side track: i'm trying very hard not to use an alternate name I came up with based on those three letters.

So you honestly think a single movie will be the result of more people dying? ok. fine with me. But so was Uncle Tom's Cabin. And, for that matter, the Declaration of Independence. Part of living in the USA is sucking it up and accepting that people think VERY different from you. I'm allowed to be a Nazi if I want to, so long as I don't actually kill or maim anyone. That's part of the Constitution. And if we're not living that, then what the heck is the point? He's an actor. He acts. He is going to be in movies you hate. He's going to be in movies you find offensive. Tough luck.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Yes, to Dr. Jeff, Mr. Zane has made it even harder for US troops not to come under fire.  Many people already believe the US is a "shoot first, dig through the debris later".  By showing that US troops as SOP shoot at civilians without care, they will be shot at more often.  Which means the will shoot back more often and that will only lead to more unneeded bloodshed and caualties.

and you can prove this how?

It doesnt take a movie to do that, so I can only assume you must have missed the gist of what I said. The people who want to kill us dont need a provocation. Thats why something as ridiculous as a cartoon inspires the populations there to commit murder and anarchy. If you think the cartoon is the cause of that violence I suggest you think again. The cartoon is an excuse, and an easily found one. To try and censor oneself because it might prevent a violent reaction is asking for worse. There are plenty of other offences and provocations we do every day in the west that can be siezed on to kill us with.

1. Women driving and going around uncovered is an affront to god... lets kill the infidels.

2. Saying something against the leader of my country is an affront to god ... lets kill the infidels.

3. Allowing Jews to exist, or providing aid to Israel is an affront to god... lets kill the infidels

I can go on and on.

That kind of thinking isnt echoed by the educated segments of those societies (in general) but it is used as a method of social control.

Equating the most liberal islamic democracy with our enemies is short sited and I believe ultimately racist.

You asked for facts about why the Turks were in that part of Iraq...

well heres a slew of them

from and article entiled  "The PKK Factor
Another critical enemy front in the war on terror"
by Michael Rubin
National Review Online
August 5, 2004

The PKK's terror in northern Iraq stretches more than a decade. In 1994, PKK terrorists rained mortars down on the rooftops of the mountaintop settlement of Amadya. Touring the ancient town in March 2001, residents showed me the damage to their homes.

PKK members also sabotaged bridges, cutting off villagers from their fields and disrupting the local economy. No matter how poor were Masud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan at their nadir, neither cultivated nor smuggled drugs. The same is not true of the PKK, which facilitates drug smuggling from Iran through Iraq and Turkey and into Europe.

In November 2000, fighting erupted on Qandil mountain between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan [PUK] and PKK after the PKK sought to take over the nearby town of Rania. More than 400 died in subsequent battles. Fighting was so severe that PUK television every evening broadcast the names of its murdered peshmurga. Municipal governments in towns like Darbandikan and Kuysanjaq erected to better accommodate mourners.

The PKK's most bloody legacy is in Turkey. In the mid-1980s, the PKK initiated a violent campaign responsible for over 30,000 deaths in Turkey. The PKK raided villages and executed civilians. More Kurdish civilians died at the hands of the PKK than at the hands of the Turkish army...

Clientitis is greater among U.S. military officers. The problem is exacerbated by the geographic divisions between commands. Whereas U.S. military relations with Turkey fall under the European Command (EUCOM), U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) oversees Iraq and the Arab world. Many CENTCOM officials interact only with Arab elites. They listen to their complaints about U.S. policy and the inapplicability of democracy to their region. They fail to realize that it is neither U.S. policy nor democracy that is the problem, but rather Arab elites themselves. "We never had a problem with EUCOM," a senior Turkish military official told me last week. "But CENTCOM was different. They looked at Turkey as a banana republic. They thought they could dictate to our leaders the way they dictate to Arab dictators. They forgot we were a democracy."

The personal relationship between CENTCOM officers and the Turkish general staff has gone from bad to worse. On July 4, 2003, U.S. forces in Sulaymaniyah detained a Turkish commando force operating illegally in Iraq. Turkish authorities leaked the incident to the press. U.S. officials say that the Turkish commandoes had in their possession documents indicating that they sought to assassinate a Kirkuk political figure; Turkish authorities deny this. One CENTCOM official told me they had warned Ankara after previous incidents. During March 2003 negotiations in Ankara, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad made clear that the U.S. would not tolerate Turkish incursions not coordinated with CENTCOM. While some elements of the Turkish military appear at fault, the failure of CENTCOM liaison officers to establish the close working relations with Turkish general staff that EUCOM personnel enjoyed exacerbated the situation.

Regardless of the fault or blame, the July 4 incident has had a deeper lasting impact in Turkey than did the dispute over passage of U.S. troops. Many U.S. officials serving in Baghdad trace Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer's hardening attitude — if not antipathy — toward Turkey to the Sulaymaniyah incident.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

cut due to length...

The difficulty with fighting the PKK
As war in Iraq approached, Turkish diplomats and generals both raised concern about the presence of the PKK. They have continued to do so since. American officials respond that Washington takes seriously Turkey's concerns. But, a gap remains between U.S. rhetoric and actions, severely straining Washington's credibility. "You guys simply don't understand how seriously we take this," a long-time Turkish diplomatic acquaintance told me at an Ankara teahouse last month.

According to both Turkish and U.S. sources, CENTCOM has promised to share with Turkey plans which address the PKK, but consistently fails to deliver. There may be legitimate reasons for planning delays, but CENTCOM leaves the impression that it is filibustering. "I can understand their concerns," said a Turkish general, acknowledging that rooting PKK out of inhospitable terrain is difficult, "But I can't understand why they won't be honest with us."

CENTCOM also suffers a credibility gap at home. Even as I was stopped by PKK fighters, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Joint Staff continued to claim ignorance of the PKK's exact location. This was dishonest or disingenuous. As we continued on from the de facto PKK checkpoint, we could see from the roadside a well-tended PKK graveyard and also a permanent PKK compound under camouflage, mesh netting. Twice rounding bends beneath high bluffs, we saw automatic weapon-toting PKK fighters over looking the road.

The Joint Staff's claims are more troubling given rumors that, last autumn, apparently without interagency authorization, some members of the 101st Airborne met with PKK representatives in Mosul, thereby legitimizing the terrorist group in direct contravention to the policy of the commander-in-chief.

The PKK is a "kurdish freedom fighter/terrorist group" that was trying to create a nationalist kurdish state. Of course it didnt matter who they killed in order to do it, but since the Kurds are are allies, they cant be bad. <insert sarcasm here> Turkey has suffered at the hands of bombs and targeted assasination campaigns perpetrated by the Kurds and they were afraid that they would use the war as an opportunity to attack Turkey. Hence the Special forces. Frankly we would have done the same thing.


I can see the US being angry if while protecting what we belived to be our interests our troops were captured and held like criminals or suspected terrorists. In fact  we have been angry... in places like Lebanon.


Apparently you missed my post. You know the one with facts.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Ok, OCD, here's the thing.

On this particular subject, Jeffe and I are fairly liberal, while Skar certainly is not. However, you find that all three of us, regardless of our support for the war, think you've said some ridiculous things.

Your last post doesn't help. It's full of some very scant circumstantial evidence. I believe one paragraph essentially states that because Cheny was for briging down Saddam before that means he and Bush pre-planned a war to take over Iraq... Sorry, but regardless of my feelings for Cheney, this sort of conclusion doesn't follow. So he had motivation. So did about 90% of America in the 90s. There still is no concrete evidence of what you're endevoring to prove.

I feel that people who bring this sort of emotional argument without a rational structure to the table end up making the disagreement worse, rather than better.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

/me inserts snarky liberal comment

"plus I think there is a certain amount of evidence that shows that the war wasnt planned at all."

[Skar]

I do believe that they were instrumental in starting a war for their own reasons.  

You can believe what you want, of course.  There were  plenty of good reasons to go to war with Iraq.  Even if the people you name had reasons of their own to go to war with Iraq that does not negate the good reasons.  Now, if there had been no good reasons to go to war with Iraq and the ONLY reasons were personal ones for the folks in power we'd have a problem.  That's simply not the case though.

The third has been found to be true.  Only Cheney has connected Al Quada to Iraq.

Again, patently false.  Thousands of documents have been found that detail connections Saddam's regime had with Osama bin Laden and others.  This includes Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists whose families he paid in support of suicide attacks on Israeli civilians.  If you think Hamas is not connected with Al Quaeda I don't know what to say to you.  The reason you don't hear those documents touted from the roof tops are manifold, political agendas in the newsroom being one and the fact that documents are just plain boring compared to IEDs and car bombs being another.

Even if "high ranking Iraqi and Al Quada" links were true, that means nothing.  Right now we, the US, have "high level links" to North Korea.  Does that mean we're in with them?

Comparing apples to oranges do not make them into oranges.  1.  North Korea is a state.  Al Quaeda is not. 2. We provide food aid to North Korea.  Osama and other terrorist leaders wined and dined by Saddam were not asking for food.

Still, going to war over false pretenses is plain wrong, as was the case for Cheney and Rumsfeld.  

Yes, going to war over false pretenses is plain wrong.  It was not the case with the Iraq war.

Ever hear of the "Carpenter Commission"?  That was a think tank of NeoCons who advocated overthrowing Saddam.  Here's a short list of the major players:

Cheney
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz(sp?)

So, the war in Iraq was pre-planned by those who had direct access to the president.  That and by ensuring other intelligence sources, like those that disputed what they wanted to hear, were muzzled set the stage.  Uses 9/11 in such a blatant way as to whip up public support via lies makes it even more reprehensible.

Listing major players and saying that people had plans to overthrow Saddam before we went to war in Iraq does not a case make.  I guarantee you the Pentagon had several plans for overthrowing Saddam.  They also have plans for going to war with every first world country on the  planet.  So what?

The war in Iraq, technically, never ended.  The 11 years between DesertStorm and Iraqi Freedom were just a ceasefire, called to let Saddam convince the U.N. that he had dismantled his WMD.  He never did that.  The U.N. itself had resolved to go to war with Iraq years before we finally did if he didn't prove his WMDs were gone.  The only reason they didn't is the same reason the U.N. is totally ineffective everywhere else.  It's corrupt and functionally impotent.

Former generals in Saddam's regime are now writing books detailing how, once he realized Iraqi freedom was a done deal(9 months before it happened) he put his WMD operations onto the same trucks he'd been using to move them around in order to scam the U. N. inspectors and stored them in Syria.

They were also there to set the stage that while I am not a Bush fan, I still think that this movie is plain wrong. ... very bad thing".

The people in Iraq, unlike you, have more than a movie to judge the behavior of American troops by.  Iraqis see Americans fighting and dying for their freedom from tyrannical militant Islam every day. No movie is going to convince them that Americans are really baby-killing monsters when they see proof to the contrary in real life every day.

I think whoever made that movie is an idiot but I don't think it's going to deeply affect public opinion in Iraq or anywhere else.  In order to do that you have to have a decades long smear campaign like the one hollywood and the media pulled on the VietNam war and American soldiers in general.

Besides, I do note that nobody has even tried to answer what the Turks were doing in Northern Iraq, Kurdish Iraq, in the first place.  Would you like to try?

Jeff did a fine job of that I think.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Reuters today

CHRONOLOGY-Recent bomb blasts in Turkey
09 Feb 2006 17:42:55 GMT

Source: Reuters

(Updates with group's claim of responsibility)

Feb 9 (Reuters) - A bomb blast at an Internet cafe in Istanbul wounded 17 people, including seven police officers, on Thursday, and a hardline Kurdish group claimed responsibility.

The Kurdistan Liberation Hawks, who have claimed to be behind a series of bombings in Turkey in recent years, carried out the blast, a person claiming to speak for the group said.

Following is a chronology of some of the major bombings in Turkey over the last two years:

Nov 15, 2003 - Thirty people are killed and 146 wounded when car bombs shatter two synagogues in Istanbul as worshippers celebrate the Sabbath. Authorities name two men from southeast Turkey as the suicide bombers, saying the attacks bear the hallmarks of the al Qaeda network.

Nov 20, 2003 - Thirty-two people are killed and many wounded in two explosions in Istanbul. One blast destroys part of the HSBC Bank headquarters and the other damages the British consulate.

May 17, 2004 - Four small bombs explode outside branches of British bank HSBC in Ankara and Istanbul, hours before British Prime Minister Tony Blair was set to visit Turkey.

June 24, 2004 - Four people are killed and 15 wounded in an explosion on a bus in Istanbul, shortly before U.S. President George W. Bush is due to arrive in the city.

Sept 28, 2004 - Two small bombs explode in front of branches of the British HSBC Bank in Turkey and a third blast hit a Turkish-American Association in the capital Ankara.

July 2, 2005 - Six people are killed and 15 injured after a bomb planted by Kurdish guerrillas explodes on a train between the eastern towns of Elazig and Tatvan in Bingol province.

July 6, 2005 - A bomb rips through a minibus in western Turkish holiday resort of Kusadasi, killing at least five people, including a British and an Irish woman.

Nov 9, 2005 - A bomb in a book store kills one in the town of Semdinli near the Iraqi and Iranian borders. Days later a Turkish court charged a military sergeant and a former Kurdish rebel with involvement in the bombing.

Feb 9, 2006 - A bomb explodes at an Internet cafe in the Bayrampasa district of Istanbul near the airport. At least 17 people are injured. The Kurdistan Liberation Hawks claimed responsibility

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

lots of attacks by Kurdish terrorist groups on that timeline in the article...

[Entsuropi]

Nov 20, 2003 - Thirty-two people are killed and many wounded in two explosions in Istanbul. One blast destroys part of the HSBC Bank headquarters and the other damages the British consulate.

I remember reading about that. We either turned the consulate into a fortress or moved it, can't remember. Either way, it's not as nice as it was.



The turkish troops had no reason to be in Iraq. They had not cleared it with the government or the local military presence. That's a fairly solid point I think.  Imagine what would happen if we brits found Republic of Ireland troops running around Belfast? Plenty of terrorists both north and south of that particular border. Usually, however, when someones troops get caught where they shouldn't be, they don't make a fuss over it.

Turkey is in a very awkward position right now. They are trying to become part of the EU, and are coming up against the suspicions of the EU states - I think France and Greece, in particular, were opposed to them. Greece hates Turkey, due to many reasons (going back to the Trojan war, all told) but recently for Cyprus. I'm really not surprised they have anti-american films - it's likely they have a veritable melting pot of opinions regarding the western world right now.



I'm not even going to lower myself to talk about Iraq. I'm done and dusted with that particular debate. Wake me up when someone says something new.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

The turkish troops had no reason to be in Iraq. They had not cleared it with the government or the local military presence. That's a fairly solid point I think.

Its solid in some ways and not in others. Right now, I dont think a lot of Americans would care about the sovereignty of a country if they knew it harbored terrorists.

It may not be legal, but I certainly understand the impulse to have troops there.

I think that the British experience in Northen Ireland gives you and countrymen a different perspective than we seem to have right now.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

...

I'm thinking you're not very bright. Go back and read the last page carefully. He provided an article with a string of reasons for Turkey to be there that don't involve the genocide you charge them with.

[Skar]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp

http://www.nysun.com/article/26514

Total elapsed search time.  30 sec.

Do it yourself next time.

[Entsuropi]

The war was actually conducted because Bush was running out of chocolate, and daym those Iraqies make nice chocolate.

It was later revealed that it was Belgium that he wished to invade. This embarrassing mistake appears to have been made because nobody within the white house could quite make out what the President was saying at first, and later didn't have the heart to tell him.

All true. No lies.

[Skar]

Yeah.  Chocolate and BEER!  "Daym fahn bur in yraak."