pumpkin ash's blog

A Short Guide to Iraq for GI’s (1943)

Submitted by pumpkin ash on Thu, 06/14/2007 - 6:30pm
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It is easy to see why they called my grandfathers’ era the Greatest Generation.

A Short Guide to Iraq for GI’s (4.8 meg pdf) (Here is an html copy link to the guide).

YOU HAVE been ordered to Iraq (i-RAHK) as part of the worldwide offensive to beat Hitler.

You will enter Iraq as a soldier and an individual, because on our side a man can be both a soldier and an individual. That is our strength – if we are smart enough to use it. It can be our weakness if we aren’t. As a soldier your duties are laid out for you. As an individual, it is what you do on your own that counts – and it may count for a lot more than you think.

Great Debate: On Bombing Iran, between an American-Israeli Likudnik and an American antiwar libertarian Paleocon

Submitted by pumpkin ash on Thu, 06/14/2007 - 8:06am
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In six parts:

1. Bomb Iran Now
Only fierce military action can stop the Atomic Ayatollahs;
by Michael Freund,

2. Iran is No Threat To America
This may be Israel's fight, but it's not ours;
by Justin Raimondo

3. Wake Up And Smell the Uranium
Ahmadinejad and Khameini want to destroy our way of life;
by Michael Freund

McCaffrey now doing a semi-Murtha?

Submitted by pumpkin ash on Sat, 11/18/2006 - 10:32am
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From ArmyTimes

The U.S. would have to slash combat forces in Iraq to 10 brigades by Christmas to keep the Army from breaking, said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey. See McCaffrey’s GWOT presentation.

Saying he thinks “we’re stuck now,” he acknowledged that pulling out five of the 15 brigades now on duty in Iraq by the end of December is not feasible.

“We can’t precipitously withdraw. It will ignite all-out civil war, possibly among not only Iraq but its six neighbors,” he said in a telephone interview Nov. 16.

There are Iraqi Shiites, and there are OUR pro-Iran Shiites

Submitted by pumpkin ash on Sun, 11/05/2006 - 4:15pm
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There are two main Shiite militant organisations in Iraq: Ayatollah al Hakim's Badr Brigades/SCIRI group, and Muqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army. These groups exist as an Iraqi Shiite version of the Hatfields and McCoys. Grasping the political distinctions and dynamics between these two competing Shiite power groups is key to understanding major aspects of the ongoing strife inside Iraq.

However, for whatever reasons, there seems to be much public confusion/conflation and general lack of awareness by many of our political leaders and the US media, of the distinctive roles, political affinities, and political goals of these two key Shiite Iraqi power bases. Thus I will attempt to profile them in this diary.

Thought Experiment: What happens next when/if Saddam is convicted?

Submitted by pumpkin ash on Sat, 11/04/2006 - 2:38pm
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The charges that former dictator Saddam Hussein is being tried for, according to this story:

On July 8, 1982 an unsuccessful assassination attempt targeted Saddam while he was visiting the town [of Dujail, a small Shiite town in Iraq, located some 65 kilometres north of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, and has around 10,000 inhabitants]. His convoy was engaged in a three-hour firefight but the Iraqi dictator escaped unharmed.

Later, at Saddam's orders, a total of 143 males in the town were killed or executed, including a number of 13-year-old boys, in a reprisal for the failed assassination attempt.

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