The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Tuesday, July 20, 2010

War News for Tuesday, July 20, 2010

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from an IED blast in an unidentified location in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, July 20th.


Ex-M15 spy chief testifies at UK's Iraq inquiry:
"There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA," she told the inquiry. "It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine." Manningham-Buller said those pushing the case for war had given undue prominence to scraps of inconclusive intelligence on possible links between Iraq and the 2001 attacks. She suggested the dispute led former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to disregard CIA intelligence in favour of work produced by his own department.

Saddam 'had limited attack ability':

6 Turkish Soldiers Killed in Kurdish Attack

Iraq’s Conflict, Reflected in a Family Tragedy


Reported security incidents

Diyala Prv:
#1: A suicide car bomber struck a residential area in a town in Diyala province in eastern Iraq on Tuesday, killing three civilians and wounding nine others, a provincial police source said. The attack took place around midday when a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car at a residential area in the town of Qara-Tappa, some 120 km north of the provincial capital city of Baquba, the source from Diyala operations command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The powerful blast destroyed three houses in the Shiite Turkman neighborhood, the source said.

#2: Late on Monday, Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, was the scene of another suicide bomb attack when a suicide bomber detonated his booby-trapped car at a parking lot close to the casino in the city, killing seven people and wounding 26 others.


Kirkuk:
#1: “A roadside bomb went off today targeting a police patrol near the Domez Bridge, south of Kirkuk city, wounding three policemen and damaging their patrol vehicle,” a local police source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#2: “Two roadside bombs went off today targeting an Iraqi army patrol near the al-Zab district, 85 km southwest of Kirkuk city, wounding a soldier and damaging the patrol’s vehicle,” another police source said.

#3: Gunmen on a motorcycle shot and injured a civilian in southeastern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.


Tal Afar:
#1: Iraqi army forces killed on Monday a suicide bomber in central Talafar in west of Mosul, according to a military commander. “A force from the 10th brigade of the 3rd division of the Iraqi army killed on Monday afternoon (July 19) a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt strapped to his body before detonating himself in a crowded area in al-Taliaa neighborhood in central Talafar,” Brigadier Abdulrahman Hanzal Abu Raghief told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The forces stopped the man and asked him to show his identity, but he threw a hand grenade on them. They riddled him with bullets before detonating him remotely without casualties,” he added.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: A sticky bomb attached to car of an anti-al Qaeda Sahwa militia leader killed him in western Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: NATO troops said they killed several insurgents preparing to attack a major international conference in Kabul, with the Afghan capital under security lockdown for the high profile event on Tuesday. The alleged militants were killed during a raid on a house on the southern edge of the city overnight, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, suspecting the Taliban of plotting an attack on the conference. Two other militants were captured while "pursuing a Taliban facilitator believed to be in final stages of preparation for attacks against the Kabul conference," it said.

#2: The interior ministry said suspected militants fired rockets into Kabul late Monday, landing near the airport but causing no casualties.

Local journalists said two short-range rockets had landed early on July 20 at Kabul International Airport. According to the reports, several people were injured as a result.

Intense rocket barrage prevented a plane carrying United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt from landing at the Kabul airport on Tuesday and the aircraft was forced to be diverted to Bagram air base. The two dignitaries were arriving in the Afghan capital to attend an International Conference on Afghanistan and the attack was confirmed by the Swedish foreign minister on his blog. "...Rockets hit the airport just when we were coming in to land," read the blog posted at 05:30 hours in the morning (local time). Officials later confirmed that the flight was diverted to nearby Bagram base from where the two VVIPs were ferried by a Black Hawk helicopter.

#3: Five militants were killed Tuesday morning when security forces thwarted a planned attack targeting a military training camp in northwest Pakistan, intelligence officials told CNN. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said security forces opened fire on the militants as they were scaling one of the camp walls around 6 a.m.Tuesday morning. Three of the attackers, who were strapped with suicide vests, blew themselves up during the gunfight, officials said. They said security forces shot and killed two militants. Another two militants remain at large.The training camp is located in Mardan, a city in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

#4: In other events, Pakistani jet fighters and helicopters pounded militant hideouts with air strikes on Monday killing 42 suspected militants, two Pakistani intelligence officials told CNN. The officials said the militant hideouts were located in Orakzai and Kurram, two of the seven districts in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border. In March, the Pakistan military launched an offensive in Orakzai to flush out foreign and Pakistani militants who had escaped an earlier offensive in South Waziristan.

#5: Two people were killed and five others were injured on July 20 when a bomb went off in the Afgnah capital, Kabul, just ahead of the International Conference on Afghanistan, witnesses said, according to RIA Novosti. The blast reportedly occurred in Kabul's Khair Khana area at about 6:10am MOSCOW time (2:10am GMT) despite enhanced security measures. The Afghan Interior Ministry confirmed the reports on the blast, which, according to the ministry, injured several people. The ministry has called on Kabul residents to stay home on July 20.


DoD: Sgt. Matthew W. Weikert

DoD: Sgt. 1st Class John H. Jarrell

DoD: Sgt. Leston M. Winters

DoD: Cpl. Dave M. Santos

DoD: Staff Sgt. Justus S. Bartelt

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

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No one in the Bush admin ever said that Saddam was involved in the planning, financing, or execution of the 9/11 attacks. I ask anyone to post a quote that proves otherwise.

I think Cheney once misspoke on one of the news shows but he corrected that a few minutes later.

This is a canard set up by the anti-war crowd. They have been misrepresenting the argument for war all along so that they may discredit Bush and his people.

The Wiz



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Cervantes said...

Bush stands by al Qaeda, Saddam link:

"President Bush repeated his administration's claim that Iraq was in league with al Qaeda under Saddam Hussein's rule . . . " . . "Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Monday in Florida, raised eyebrows by reasserting claims that Saddam "had long-established ties with al Qaeda." . . . In September, after Cheney asserted that Iraq had been "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11," Bush acknowledged there was no evidence that Saddam's government was connected to those attacks.

This "acknowledgment" by Bush was on June 15, 2004. It took me 1 second to google this.

In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11. "Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was "personally involved" in Sept. 11, about the same figure as a month ago." (This was March, 2003)

June 2004: "Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

Etc. etc. etc. They used careful rhetorical tricks to seem to assert that Saddam was behind 9/11, and managed to convince half the public of that lie with the help of Fox News, while leaving a bit of wiggle room for later plausible deniability.

Cervantes said...

And oh yeah -- This is the letter Bush sent to Congress declaring he was going to attack:

"Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:



(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and



(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

That seems pretty definitive.

Anonymous said...

The Bush admin, through 9/11, imposed hate to justify the war in Iraq and the execution of Saddam.

Anonymous said...

evil said the little white sheep.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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Section 2 stated "against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those that were involved in 9/11. That means attacks against all terrorists plus the 9/11 attackers. It does not mean that Iraq was part of 9/11.


Also, Bush repeatedly stated that "after 9/11, we had to re-evaluate the threats posed by countries such as Iraq." (Paraphrased as he stated it many times many ways.) That is different than saying that Iraq was involved in the attacks on 9/11.

And there were many contacts between SoDamn Insane's people and OBL's posse. Much of the evidence of such was known before Bush took office. I have posted links to such many times here.

But after seeing some of the reading comprehension problems exhibited here, I can understand why people can't see the truth.

After 9/11, there was only one leader of any country on the planet that applauded the attacks and actually called for more. That amounts to a deceleration of war.....and war he got.

the wiz




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Observer said...

Saddam's opinions as to 9-11 was hardly a declaration of war, and America's government was not following any Laws when it invaded Iraq.

A complete disaster for America.
And for the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the future of the State of Israel.

whisker said...

WOW did the idiot who goes by the wiz really iterate such utter bullshit that gw never said Saddam had direct links to the 911 planning. He must be watching Glen Beck 24/7 to believe such disinformation.

Anonymous said...

Whisker;

if you have a quote that Bush said that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks, please post a link to it.

the wiz

Ken Hoop said...

It's too bad Obama is a fellow elitist and also one who gives a damn about being tolerated by the likes of "thewiz" (war crimal fellow travelers) or he would have encouraged proper indictment of the Bush/Cheney team. At least before conducting drone bombing.

Anonymous said...

I am sure there were several leaders of several countries who cheered the attacks on 9/11. There will be scores of them the next time the US is attacked.

And the real losers in the illegal invasion and destruction and occupation of Iraq is the Iraqi people.

The invasion of Iraq was no different than the 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany.

Anonymous said...

What looney tunes; the Germans annexed Poland after the invasion, more like the invasion of Kuwait by SoDamn Insane. And the US will leave Iraq in the hands of the Iraqi people living in a democratic and capitalistic country. Its probably the "capitalistic" part that has everyone here so up in arms.

And no other leader cheered the 9/11 attacks. Iran condemned them and over a million people held a candlelight vigil in Tehran. Kadhaffi condemned them. Yassar Arafat even gave blood in a demonstration of how much he objected to them.

wizzer