"The war is going poorly"

[CPA]

Originally posted by: glugglug
18 US military killed by Iraqis.
19 killed by friendly fire/accidents/sabotage/stupidity

So we killed more of us than the Iraqis did. That means we're winning right?

While I'm not sure of your intent of your post it made me laugh.

 

[Zebo]

Hey what ever sells with the "news" right. This turkey shoot is going so well we are at Bagdad and in two months they will run out of food and all will be over. Some seem to think we have to kill to win. No, one thing rummy is right about is getting Bagdad quick, surrounding it, then the rest of the country will be free to celebrate. As long as we control Bagdad (ie no troops going in or out) we have already won.

 

[splice]

Originally posted by: BunLengthHotDog
Just adding pictures of all the Iraqis that HATE the US

GET OUT, you infedels!!!!

Hey, one of the kids on the right side of that picture is "raisin' the roof!"

 

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by: Doboji
My feeling is this.... we have to lose at least 100 tanks, 10,000 Men, and kill off 20,000 civillians before I consider the war going poorly, anything less than that and I'm still feeling very very positive about it. I mean did anyone really think we'd win in a week?.... It's hard to shoot 60,000 people in a week if they're standing still, much less running around with AKs and hiding in Bunkers.

Reality check if we don't go to war... and we dont deal with the terror issues of the middle east.... then we're likely to lose 10,000 or more civillians in terror attacks in the next decade, if we don't free the iraqi's how many will die of starvation in the next 2 months alone? Still think the costs of war are high?

-Max

If we have anything close to 10,000 casualties there will be some massive public backlash against this war.

10,000 civilian casualties due to terror in the next decade? How many U.S. civilian casualties have there been due to Iraqi terrorists in the last few years (not the 3000+ from 9/11 certainly). They sure have you scared straight. Are Iran, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, etc. next on the list for invasion because they sponsor or have sponsored terrorism?

 

[konichiwa]

Originally posted by: Doboji
My feeling is this.... we have to lose at least 100 tanks, 10,000 Men, and kill off 20,000 civillians before I consider the war going poorly, anything less than that and I'm still feeling very very positive about it. I mean did anyone really think we'd win in a week?.... It's hard to shoot 60,000 people in a week if they're standing still, much less running around with AKs and hiding in Bunkers.

Reality check if we don't go to war... and we dont deal with the terror issues of the middle east.... then we're likely to lose 10,000 or more civillians in terror attacks in the next decade, if we don't free the iraqi's how many will die of starvation in the next 2 months alone? Still think the costs of war are high?

-Max

Do you really believe that we won't lose (10,000 is a pretty high number, but let's say thousands of) civilians in terror attacks in the next decade because of this war?

 

[Doboji]

Terrorism is a global problem, symptomatic of non-democratic regimes specifically in the Middle East. The War in Iraq is the first step in alleviating this problem. If you think that terrorism will magically go away, you're completely naive. The threat is real, we either face it or, we reap it. SO long as there are islamic dictatorships, that teach this corrupted version of Martyrdom, and acceptable warfare, there will be terrorism, we have to change that.

-Max

 

[charrison]

Originally posted by: konichiwa

Originally posted by: Doboji
My feeling is this.... we have to lose at least 100 tanks, 10,000 Men, and kill off 20,000 civillians before I consider the war going poorly, anything less than that and I'm still feeling very very positive about it. I mean did anyone really think we'd win in a week?.... It's hard to shoot 60,000 people in a week if they're standing still, much less running around with AKs and hiding in Bunkers.

Reality check if we don't go to war... and we dont deal with the terror issues of the middle east.... then we're likely to lose 10,000 or more civillians in terror attacks in the next decade, if we don't free the iraqi's how many will die of starvation in the next 2 months alone? Still think the costs of war are high?

-Max

Do you really believe that we won't lose (10,000 is a pretty high number, but let's say thousands of) civilians in terror attacks in the next decade because of this war?

Can you say we would not have lost 10000 civilians in terror attacks in the future without this war?

 

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by: Doboji
Terrorism is a global problem, symptomatic of non-democratic regimes specifically in the Middle East. The War in Iraq is the first step in alleviating this problem. If you think that terrorism will magically go away, you're completely naive. The threat is real, we either face it or, we reap it. SO long as there are islamic dictatorships, that teach this corrupted version of Martyrdom, and acceptable warfare, there will be terrorism, we have to change that.

-Max

So who's next on the hit list?

 

[steell]

Originally posted by: PipBoy

Originally posted by: Doboji
Terrorism is a global problem, symptomatic of non-democratic regimes specifically in the Middle East. The War in Iraq is the first step in alleviating this problem. If you think that terrorism will magically go away, you're completely naive. The threat is real, we either face it or, we reap it. SO long as there are islamic dictatorships, that teach this corrupted version of Martyrdom, and acceptable warfare, there will be terrorism, we have to change that.

-Max

So who's next on the hit list?

I bet if we wait a while, we will find out

 

[smartt]

If you are an Iraqi leader, the war is going poorly.

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: Morph
The problem is that the US government and media (the propaganda machine, as I like to call them collectively) gave everyone the impression that the entire population of Iraq hates Saddam Hussein, and that when we rolled in there everyone would just throw their weapons down and start dancing in the streets with joy, hailing us as their saviors. Now people see this is not the case and they start wondering, do these people even want us there? Do they even want our help? Makes you think back to a certain war in the far east in the 60's and 70's.

Saddam is not an idiot. He saw all the rebellions and massive surrenders after the first Gulf War. First he executed all the people who had rebelled in 1991. And he prepared this time by training and deploying the Fedayeen and other terrorist loyalists to go out and keep the people in fear. Iraqi's in some areas are in fact greeting us with celebration. But in areas where there are still Saddam loyalists, the citizens are too afraid to welcome us. The Fedayeen have been threatening people to make them fight. They have been shooting and shelling citizens who were trying to flee from Basrah. They know that without human shields, they will have no protection from our forces.

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: koryo

Germany and Japan are a couple of good examples....

Japan maybe, I don't know if I would count Germany, since it was already a democracy of sorts when Hitler took over. Those were also after wars that those countries started, although I don't know if that is really relevant. Maybe it's because Iraq has zero (as far as I know) democratic tradition, and was a colony for a large part of it's history, that I have major doubts about democracy magically blooming there. People who have been ruled (usually badly) by other countries have a different view of foreign "liberators" than those that haven't, and I wouldn't be shocked if that were true of the Iraqis.

Japan had a lot of exposure to Western ideas and thoughts. I say it had just about as much experience of democracy as Germany did, although Germany had a few years of experimenting through Weimar.

I predict that Iraq may go through something similar to what South Korea went through. It is highly likely that a heavily American-controlled dictator will rule the country for a while. Hopefully, it will grow into a civil society from there.

North Korea will be very complicated, though. I don't want to know what will happen to them even if the two Koreas are reunified peacefully. Hopefully things will be smooth, but that is highly unlikely.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: smartt
If you are an Iraqi leader, the war is going poorly.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: Morph
The problem is that the US government and media (the propaganda machine, as I like to call them collectively) gave everyone the impression that the entire population of Iraq hates Saddam Hussein, and that when we rolled in there everyone would just throw their weapons down and start dancing in the streets with joy, hailing us as their saviors. Now people see this is not the case and they start wondering, do these people even want us there? Do they even want our help? Makes you think back to a certain war in the far east in the 60's and 70's.

Hellooooh

The 'people in Iraq' are so brainwashed that noone can seriously EXPECT them immediately supporting 'our' side...

* these people do not KNOW our side because they do not HAVE free media, all they have is gvt controlled propaganda and saddam h. speeches and rage against the us.

* the iraqi people do not KNOW that the us wants to 'liberate' them, actually the iraqi people believe what their gvt. tells em - that is the us is evil and saddam is god.

* if you call the US gvt and media 'propaganda' and NOT the 'media' of regimes like in Iraq then you are an utter moron
As said in another post noone should believe that the us media is 'the truth and nothing than the truth' [certainly they're biased too] but it's NOTHING compared to the media in certain arabic countries.

* and, YES, i believe that the 'iraqi people' in general will sooner or later realize what the 'liberation' of Iraq actually means (free from saddam, free media, free opinions)..but this will take time ! It took and takes time to brainwash and dictate a whole country....but soon these people will see that getting rid of saddam for sure will BENEFIT them and that the us is NOT after the Iraqi *people* but the sick government/regime !

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: Ornery
I tuned in to CNN for a few minutes, only to see this dour puss on Judy Woodruff. She mumbled something at the end of one report about their viewers having grave concerns about the war... Give Me A Break!

I'd hit it. But if she started mouthing off about politics, I'd have to use a two by four.

 

[apoppin]

View from the OTHER sideDateline: 30/03/2003 13:32:58

Iraq: My Station, a Threat to America - Aljazeera Editor
News Feature

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last month, when it became clear that the US-led drive to war was irreversible, I - like many other British journalists - relocated to Qatar for a ringside seat. But I am an Islamist journalist, so while the others bedded down at the ?1m media centre at US central command in As-Sayliyah, I found a more humble berth in the capital Doha, working for the internet arm of al-Jazeera.

And yet, only a week into the war, I find myself working for the most soughtafter news resource in the world. On March 23, the night the channel screened the first footage of captured US PoW's, al-Jazeera was the most searched item on the internet portal, Lycos, registering three times as many hits as the next item.

I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply because the western media coverage has been so poor. For although Doha is just a 15-minute drive from central command, the view of events from here could not be more different. Of all the major global networks, al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing campaign, the blownout brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the screaming infants and the corpses. Its team of on-the-ground, unembedded correspondents has provided a corrective to the official line that the campaign is, barring occasional resistance, going to plan.

Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra "uprising" which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have reporters in the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned a rather flat verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly afterwards by a spokesman for the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By reporting propaganda as fact, the mainstream media had simply mirrored the Blair/Bush fantasy that the people who have been starved by UN sanctions and deformed by depleted uranium since 1991 will greet them as saviours.

Only hours before the Basra non-event, one of Iraq's most esteemed Shia authorities, Ayatollah Sistani, had dented coalition hopes of a southern uprising by reiterating a fatwa calling on all Muslims to resist the US-led forces. This real, and highly significant, event went unreported in the west.

Earlier in the week Arab viewers had seen the gruesome aftermath of the coalition bombing of "Ansar al- Islam" positions in the north-east of the country. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under "coalition" control - it was not until Wednesday that al- Jazeera could confirm all resistance there had been pacified.

Throughout the past week, armed peoples in the west and south have been attacking the exposed rearguard of coalition positions, while all the time - despite debilitating sandstorms - western TV audiences have seen little except their steady advance towards Baghdad. This is not truthful reporting.

There is also a marked difference when reporting the anger the invasion has has unleashed on the Muslim street. The view from here is that any vestige of goodwill towards the US has evaporated with this latest aggresion, and that Britain has now joined the US and Isreal as a target of rage.

The British media has condemned al-Jazeera's decision to screen a 30-second video clip of two dead British soldiers. This is simple hypocrisy. From the outset of the war, the British media has not balked at showing images of Iraqi soliders either dead or captured and humiliated.

Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most information-controlled war in history, one measure of the importance of those American PoW pictures and the images of the dead British soldiers is surely the sustained "shock and awe" hacking campaign directed at aljazeera.net since the start of the war. As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the hacking.

It's too early for me to say when, or indeed if, I will return to my homeland. So far this war has progressed according to a near worst-case scenario. Iraqis have not turned against their tormentor. The southern Shia regard the invasion force as the greater Satan. Opposition in surrounding countries is shaking their regimes. I fear there remains much work to be done.

Faisal Bodi, Senior editor, aljazeera.net, wrote this piece for Guardian of London

These are NOT necessarily my views but there is PLENTY for discussion here - in fact, I really think it needs it OWN thread.

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: apoppin
View from the OTHER sideDateline: 30/03/2003 13:32:58

Iraq: My Station, a Threat to America - Aljazeera Editor
News Feature

I will limit myself to these few comments:

1. At least they state their bias outright: al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise.

2. Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra "uprising" which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have reporters in the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned a rather flat verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly afterwards by a spokesman for the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By reporting propaganda as fact... One reporter sitting on his butt in a hotel proves conclusively that there was no uprising in the entire city, and gets "confirmation" from the Iraqi government. Al-jazeera is, of course not "reporting propaganda as fact," but the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

3. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under "coalition" control - it was not until Wednesday that al- Jazeera could confirm all resistance there had been pacified.
Thank Allah that al-Jazeera was there to confirm this! Without al-Jazeera, there can be no "proof" that any Coalition statements are true.

4. Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most information-controlled war in history, one measure of the importance of those American PoW pictures and the images of the dead British soldiers is surely the sustained "shock and awe" hacking campaign directed at aljazeera.net since the start of the war. As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the hacking. Yes, the Pentagon is the source of all evil in the Arab world, and actually has an entire platoon of elite hackers whose sole purpose is to bring down the al-Jazeera website.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: apoppin
View from the OTHER sideDateline: 30/03/2003 13:32:58

Iraq: My Station, a Threat to America - Aljazeera Editor
News Feature

I will limit myself to these few comments:

1. At least they state their bias outright: al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise.

2. Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra "uprising" which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have reporters in the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned a rather flat verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly afterwards by a spokesman for the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By reporting propaganda as fact... One reporter sitting on his butt in a hotel proves conclusively that there was no uprising in the entire city, and gets "confirmation" from the Iraqi government. Al-jazeera is, of course not "reporting propaganda as fact," but the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

3. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under "coalition" control - it was not until Wednesday that al- Jazeera could confirm all resistance there had been pacified.
Thank Allah that al-Jazeera was there to confirm this! Without al-Jazeera, there can be no "proof" that any Coalition statements are true.

4. Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most information-controlled war in history, one measure of the importance of those American PoW pictures and the images of the dead British soldiers is surely the sustained "shock and awe" hacking campaign directed at aljazeera.net since the start of the war. As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the hacking. Yes, the Pentagon is the source of all evil in the Arab world, and actually has an entire platoon of elite hackers whose sole purpose is to bring down the al-Jazeera website.

There is a thread devoted to this.DoesN'T the Pentagon HAVE hackers to bring down sites? I "thought" they did from my unrelated reading a long time ago. ?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: apoppin
View from the OTHER sideDateline: 30/03/2003 13:32:58

Iraq: My Station, a Threat to America - Aljazeera Editor
News Feature

I will limit myself to these few comments:

1. At least they state their bias outright: al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise.

2. Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra "uprising" which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have reporters in the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned a rather flat verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly afterwards by a spokesman for the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By reporting propaganda as fact... One reporter sitting on his butt in a hotel proves conclusively that there was no uprising in the entire city, and gets "confirmation" from the Iraqi government. Al-jazeera is, of course not "reporting propaganda as fact," but the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

3. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under "coalition" control - it was not until Wednesday that al- Jazeera could confirm all resistance there had been pacified.
Thank Allah that al-Jazeera was there to confirm this! Without al-Jazeera, there can be no "proof" that any Coalition statements are true.

4. Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most information-controlled war in history, one measure of the importance of those American PoW pictures and the images of the dead British soldiers is surely the sustained "shock and awe" hacking campaign directed at aljazeera.net since the start of the war. As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the hacking. Yes, the Pentagon is the source of all evil in the Arab world, and actually has an entire platoon of elite hackers whose sole purpose is to bring down the al-Jazeera website.

There is a thread devoted to this.DoesN'T the Pentagon HAVE hackers to bring down sites? I "thought" they did from my unrelated reading a long time ago. ?

Yes, I remember a similar report. Something about this being the first war having an Internet campaign of shutting down websites and what not. I don't remember if it was CNN or the CBC.

 

[AAjax]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn
If this were France we were invading then I'd say the war was going poorly.

LOL!