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Topic: Iraq
The new items published under this topic are as follows.
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Another Great Success in Iraq
Posted by: ringverse on Sunday, October 23, 2005 - 10:32 AM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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Another 'triumph' in the war against terror, and 'vindication' of the British strategy in Southern Iraq...
Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.
The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.
It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two and a half years of bloody occupation.
The nationwide survey also suggests that the coalition has lost the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which Tony Blair and George W Bush believed was fundamental to creating a safe and secure country.
The results come as it was disclosed yesterday that Lt Col Nick Henderson, the commanding officer of the Coldstream Guards in Basra, in charge of security for the region, has resigned from the Army. He recently voiced concerns over a lack of armoured vehicles for his men, another of whom was killed in a bomb attack in Basra last week.
The secret poll appears to contradict claims made by Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, who only days ago congratulated British soldiers for "supporting the Iraqi people in building a new and better Iraq".
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Don't try this at home...
Posted by: DavidK on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - 04:59 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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There has been a lot of talk and leaking about the ‘technology’ of hollow charges coming into south-eastern Iraq from Iran, but what are hollow charges?
The theory of hollow charges was not so much an invention as a discovery, made in the late nineteenth / early twentieth century, by mining engineers who noticed that the brand name usually incised into blocks of explosive could sometimes be seen blasted into the rock face where it had been exploded.
Developing this phenomenon – for mining purposes – it was soon discovered that the deeper the incision cut into the face of the block of explosive, the stronger the jet of force that could be produced.
In the 1930’s it was found that if such an incision was lined with steel, the metal melted on explosion and a jet of molten metal was projected with great force – such that a 110 lb block of explosive could drive a jet of molten steel through nine inches of armour plate.
The first time this was used in warfare was in capturing the fort at Eben Emael, south of Maastricht, in famous Belgium on 11th May 1940. (Does it still stand, I ask our Belgian correspondent?)
The method can easily be exploited by anyone used to handling explosives and you can use any ‘block’ explosive – C4 etc. Hollow charges are useful to blow small holes in buildings, safes and armour plated doors. They can also used to produce charges for use against stationary semi-armoured vehicles – especially those which lack Chobham armour or similar.
Don’t try this at home …
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Iran Accusations ... Deja Vu
Posted by: Vervet on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - 01:55 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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"Britain accuses Iran of running training camps for bombers",
The Independent, Wednesday 12 October, 2005
At this stage we will ignore the obvious falsity of the headline - 'Britain' does not accuse Iran, but unamed British government spokespersons have done so. They do not speak for me, and I am sure that there are millions of other British citizens who do not wish to lend their support to this accusation. Let's assume that this is merely journalistic short-hand, however misleading.
Britain has not made this accusation ... Mr. Bliar has done so on behalf of his master Bush, to further the phoney 'war on terror'. This is just the next stage in perpetuating the demonisation of Islamic (oil rich) states, to ramp up the argument for air-strikes.
You've previously seen it happen in Libya, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq - convincing talk of 'terror training camps', 'state sponsored terrorism', 'weapons of mass destruction' and all the scary catch-phrases. And all to justify the inevitable bombing and missile attacks (precision, of course - we are so accurate these days that no civilians are harmed - well actually they are but we don't count them so they don't count !).
'Terrorist training camps' will be 'identified' for targetting - coincidentally they will be close to nuclear processing facilities and other key infrastructure that our dear leader and his bosses would be not unhappy to see suffer colateral damage.
And so the beat (laid down by the arms manufactures, oil companies, etc.) goes on ..........
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The Peter Sutcliffe Defence
Posted by: quarsan on Thursday, October 06, 2005 - 04:49 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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Sssssh, it's embargo'd untill later tonight, but, it seems that a story reported in 2003 has some legs after all:
Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.
Nabil Shaath says:
"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.
God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan."
And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did.
And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
Shame the Good Lord didn't tip him off that he was about to lay waste to New Orleans.
I am expecting Tony to tell us that, "God told me to do whatever George says". And no, not George Galloway.
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Next stop - Iran...?
Posted by: bedblogger on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 06:11 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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Could this be a pre-emptive media strike, because there will be lots of blood shed in the coming days in the run up to the referendum on the Iraqi Constitution?
And as our dead soldiers nudge the 100 mark, the Government feel it looks better to put a scary face to the killers (ooohh, Axis of Evil), rather than admit the insurgency is way beyond their control now?
NB. Yanks are surprisingly quiet about pointing the finger at Iraq atm.
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So much for women's rights in Iraq
Posted by: bedblogger on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 04:53 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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They may have caved in over changing the meaning of the word "voters" but if anyone is in any doubt about how far from the Blair/Bush rhetoric of democracy this Constitution conspiracy/fuck up has gone, read Riverbend. She is deeply unhappy, as is Salam Pax, at his post-invasion blog. Or Juan Cole to give the background to the Coalition turning Sunni areas into battlefields that cunningly won't be able to go out to vote. Nice.
The 25% representation of women in Iraqi government is now only an aspiration, not a demand as was set down by our post-invasion CPA government in Iraq, in the same way that it is for the Tories to aspire to have ethnic minorities and women in thier ranks.
IE: simply not gonna happen in a month of sundays.
Any mention of this part of the watering down/ bastardisation of the Constitutions is missing from the English language version.
Strange that.
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Sanity Prevails - that is a surprise...
Posted by: DavidK on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 01:59 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4311690.stm
Iraq's parliament has reversed its decision to change the rules governing a referendum next week on the country's new constitution.
The altered rules would have made it much harder for Sunni opponents of the draft constitution to reject it.
Parliament has now decided to revert to the original rules - as both the United Nations and Washington said it should.
UN legal advisors said that a referendum held under the new rules would not meet international standards.
After a brief debate, MPs voted 119 to 28 to restore the original voting rules for the referendum.
Only about half of the 275-member body attended the vote, although a quorum was achieved.
The altered rules would have made it much harder for Sunni opponents of the draft constitution to reject it.
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The Iraqi Interior Minister: On Iraq and International Terror
Posted by: ringverse on Monday, October 03, 2005 - 11:50 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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Remind me why we went into Iraq again Tony, the reasons you gave before we went to war I mean...
Foreign fighters who have used Iraq as a combat training ground are returning home with plans to mount similar attacks throughout the Muslim world, Iraq's interior minister said yesterday.
Bayan Jabr said papers found on the body of Abdullah Azzam, a senior al-Qaida figure killed in an American raid in Baghdad last week, suggested that the organisation aimed to extend its campaign of suicide bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings beyond Iraq.
"We got hold of a letter from Abu Azzam [to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq] asking him to begin to move a number of Arab fighters to the countries they came from, to transfer their experience in car bombings in Iraq," Mr Jabr told Reuters. "So you will see insurgencies in other countries."
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Gun Nuts 2?
Posted by: DavidK on Monday, October 03, 2005 - 08:03 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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According to the calculations of the US General Accounting Office, quoted by the magazine Manufacturing & Technology News dated September 1st, 2005, since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. armed forces have used more than 1.8 billion bullets of 5.56 mm in its M-16 and derivatives.
We do know that according to the spokesmen of the Coalition, the number of insurgents is close to 20,000, which accounts for 90 000 bullets shot per insurgent. This gives us an idea about the ineffectiveness of the American troops and the magnitude of their mistakes...
This was a comment but got a bit long so has become a post...
Hmmm. As in most things it comes down to doctrine and, to an extent, NATO standardisation…
The M16A2 referred to fires a 5.56mm round, as do all NATO assault rifles, loaded in STANAMAGS – Standard Nato Magazines. Which is a good as you can get reloads from anywhere. This round is nice and light too so you can carry a lot more of them than you could the old US .308 and UK .303. There are criticisms of the stopping power of a round this size – despite the increased kinetic energy over the old rounds – but modern bullets tumble on impact as well as spin so although you get a small hole going in but a big one coming out.
There is a paper somewhere on ‘kills per shot’ over the last hundred years, which annoyingly I can’t find, but as I recall it declines in recent years from a high of 50:1 to the current several thousand to one; something like that anyway. In British terms this runs from the ‘five rounds rapid’ of the bolt action Lee Enfields of the1914 BEF (which convinced the Germans that they were facing machine guns), to the second world war British infantryman with basically the same weapon and cartridge who was told repeatedly that each round cost a farthing, a halfpenny or thrupence, depending on who your sergeant was, and so ‘don’t waste any’, to the excellent semi-automatic SLR that I grew up with and indeed was so happy with I saw no point in joining the enthusiasts who took every opportunity in the Falklands to replace their rifle with the Argentine version which took the same magazines but had an auto setting. Now we (the UK) of course have the fully automatic SA80, STANAMAG fitted, and soldiers are being encouraged to use the burst setting, despite the rifle’s wonderful accuracy (its one redeeming feature) rather than ‘five aimed rounds rapid’, as ‘bullets are cheap, soldiers are not’. Their great grandfathers must be turning in Flanders’ fields.
That said, it is generally accepted that modern battlefield killing is done by crew served weapons, aircraft and artillery, not by rifles. The M16 has an effective range – due to accuracy not velocity - of less than a quarter of a mile. As one (US) soldier put it, “about all that can be expected of the individual soldier is to point the loud end at the enemy and fire away”. People may recall the ‘mad minutes’ popular in Vietnam. In an effort to discourage such hosing, from the M16A2 onwards, the full auto setting has been replaced with a three round burst setting. Even so the US Army Doctrine still refers to the value of ‘fire screens’ in certain situations and describes the role of the infantry rifle as ‘suppressing other infantry (i.e. keeping their heads down, not killing them ) and in particular keeping opposing infantry from using anti-tank weapons at the tanks the infantry are supporting’.
So the doctrine is not really to aim at all. And that is in a ‘proper’ battle. In my opinion (shared by everyone I know, including many commissioned members of the US army) the US army is the worst led army in NATO. They may from this evidence be thought to be ‘trigger happy’. But in this case I would say not guilty, they are using their weapons as intended and following doctrine.
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1.8 Billion M16 Rounds Used in Iraq on 20,000 Insurgents: Do the Math...
Posted by: ringverse on Monday, October 03, 2005 - 05:17 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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Thanks to Craig Murray for pointing us to this:
According to the calculations of the US General Accounting Office, quoted by the magazine Manufacturing & Technology News dated September 1st, 2005, since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. armed forces have used more than 1.8 billion bullets of 5.56 mm in its M-16 and derivatives.
We do know that according to the spokesmen of the Coalition, the number of insurgents is close to 20,000, which accounts for 90 000 bullets shot per insurgent. This gives us an idea about the ineffectiveness of the American troops and the magnitude of their mistakes...
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Iraq - reasons ?
Posted by: Vervet on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 04:03 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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OIL, OIL, OIL
The global business conglomerate (Carlyle Group ?) controlling Bush know that civilisation is closer to catastrophe than they dare admit openly. We are at (+/- 3-years) the nadir of oil production / use – we use it up at a faster rate than we find new reserves (just ignore the latest word on reserves from the Saudis - all bollox).
In spite of knowing for many years that this point would be reached early in the 21st century, politicians and governments have achieved virtually nothing towards reducing dependency on oil. Alternative energy research has been pathetically small-scale and actively suppressed by the oil lobbyists.
Their big-business backers (oil, utilities, arms and chemical companies) have all adopted positions to maximize short-term profits, and this has determined government policies. Hence the rate of usage of oil continues to increase and therefore the point when shortages become apparent to all draws rapidly closer.
For many years now the USA hawk politicians have pursued policies to ensure massive military superiority, and used this to build towards strategic control of ALL known oil reserves on the planet.
All foreign policies are geared towards eventual control of dwindling oil reserves – Iraq is just the latest high-profile action to this end. Sabre rattling at Syria, Iran and North Korea, as well as the close relationship with Saudi Arabia, are all designed as pre-emptive strikes to ensure that eventually ONLY the USA has control of ALL oil reserves.
The USA is determined that they will be the longest survivors of this, relatively quick, death of civilisation. Our Tony Blair knows all this too, but cannot publish the information to excuse his pact with George Bush over the invasion of Iraq and other issues. He is also providing the conveniently friendly link with Putin to ensure access to the Eastern-bloc oil & gas..
As oil becomes scarce among the other nations, the effects of intermittent electricity, clean water and food supplies will lead to breakdown of civilised society in an scarily short time. Clean water is already in short supply – lack of treatment of drinking water and effluent will accelerate the shortage. Distribution of fresh foods will be hit very quickly. In the West, most are delivered ‘just-in-time’ from afar, and this system will start to break down almost as soon as fuel shortages hit.
If you accept this ‘doomsday scenario’ then you cannot blame Blair for his stance. Who would you rather be close to – the overwhelming military might of the USA or the squabbling weenies of the EU ? Man’s nature is to fight to survive as long as possible. Let’s just hope that the good ole’ US of A does actually stick by its ally and shares the oil as long as possible – then again, from past experience, any assistance is unlikely to be more than ‘crumbs fallen from the rich-man’s table’.
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Iraq: the facts & figures
Posted by: bedblogger on Thursday, September 22, 2005 - 01:53 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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US/UK forces invaded Iraq 918 days ago.
To Iraqis the occupation feels more like
* 79,315,200 seconds
* 1,321,920 minutes
* 22,032 hours
* 131 weeks (rounded down)
Iraq Body Count put figures for civilian deaths at between 25,484 and 29,487, although this is acknowleged to be incomplete as it is too unsafe in many areas to count.
The Lancet put the figure at over 100,000.
1,917 US soldiers have been killed, not including any that die today.
Which is at least 2 fatalities each day.
The US administration won't give figures for soldiers injured.
But it is believed to be over 14,000.
96 UK soldiers have been killed in Iraq.
Figures for UK forces injured inIraq are difficult to find.
3,218 Iraqi soldiers and police have been killed.
Which is 3.5 per day of occupation.
190,000 have been trained by Coalition forces.
Between 2/3 and 3/4 are loyal to militias not the Coalition: 127,000 - 143,000
Between 47,000 - 63,000 are loyal(ish) to US/UK troops.
They are not capable to take over from the Coalition, having received fast, poor quality training.
56 journalists have been killed (min).
268 Coalition civilian contractors have been killed (min).
Saddam could not have attacked us in 45 minutes.
Saddam had no WMD.
Saddam had no involvement in 9/11.
Saddam hated Al Qaeda, he was not harbouring them.
Nor did he have nukes, anthrax or an army of any size or quality, willing to fight in his name.
This war is not going well, despite what the powers that be say.
It has not made us safer in the UK.
It has not liberated Iraqis from tyranny, simply swaping one appalling situation for another.
Civil war has obviously broken out.
Was it worth it?
Figures from:
iraq Body count
Ant-war.com
Global Security.org
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/USfatalities.html
Time and date.com
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Smash & Grab diplomacy. Is Basra turning into the Sunni Triangle?
Posted by: bedblogger on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 02:01 PM
[Topic:-Iraq]
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Watching lunchtime News, I can vouch from the images of the scene at the Basra police station, that whatever went on, it does not tally with what the Defense Secretary John Reid on the radio this morning.
The outer walls of the police station no longer exist - it looks like a collective punshment by the Israelis on Arafat's compound, as opposed to knocking a wall down by mistake. Several cars lie in front of the chaos crushed under the caterpillar tracks of a tank. Its a mess. Uk troops obviously went in with both boots. Whether this was an appropriate or proportionate reaction of occupiers is unknown.
Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili called the Army action a "barbaric act of aggression". And without knowing all the facts, but surveying the scene on TV, I can see what he means. And how it will look to Iraqis.
How can we say the Iraqis have real sovereignty, if when our troops are arrested as part of an Iraqi criminal process - eg, a murder inquiry where UK Special Forces in disguise with a car full of explosives shoot dead the investigating officer - UK has it enshrined in law we get them back to evade Iraqi scrutiny? Our previous record on investigating deaths of Iraqis in UK custody, soldiers have received a slapped wrist for beating kids to death, ignoring evidence supporting a conviction.
Maybe the Iraqi justice, political and law enforcement systems, with all the failings we happily built in, such as the primacy of Sharia law, wanted to prosecute this crime themselves, as is their right if they are truely sovereign.
We obviously do not trust that justice and chose to smash and grab the arrested men, diplomacy by the barrel of a tank, possibly allowing criminals to escape, and getting the address where the UKSF (ITV News confirmed) soldiers were being kept by militia.
But if Iraqi justice is not good enough for us, then why is it acceptable for the Iraqi citizens, for whom Blair says we are there to liberate from tyranny? Either we built liberated, democratic and visibly accountable systems over the last few years of occupation, evaluating the effects as we go; or we helped set up a system that may be no better than that which we removed.
It has been apparent for a long time that Basra Police force and soldiers had been infiltrated by al Sadr militia and UK forces didn't give a shit before, giving these terrorist loons explosives and heavy weapons training. Steve Vincent died because he published the fact in Western media, saying 75% of police were Sadr sympathisers. Kidnap for money, rape, assassinations and murder - all by militia/police officers using official police cars - have been a part of Basra reality as UK stood watching mutely. Our media just chose/ were told not to show it.
As Salam Pax asked soon after the invasion, Where are our copies of Democracy for Dummies?
It looks now like the lesson plans in democracy, human rights and a healthy civil society for Iraq got left behind along with functioning replacements for the old Army Klansman radios and body armour for our troops.
Many, many questions remain unanswered. We cannot expect to get the whole truth out of a Shia-militia controlled Iraqi authority in Basra, but MoD spokesmen, Brigadeer John Lorimar and the Defense Secretary spreading mis-information on our airwaves is contemptable. Start telling us the truth, otherwise we will rely on the images before us. And they makes us look like heavy-handed and destructive US soldiers. As it does to Iraqi Government in Baghdad who have started an inquiry into the events of yesterday.
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