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quagmire .....

quagmire .....

‘Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq build-up beyond next spring.

The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008:

* using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule;

* breaking the military's pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months;

* breaching a commitment to gie soldiers a full year at hom before sending them back to war.

For a war-fatigued nation and a Congress bent on bringing troops home, none of those is desirable.

In Iraq, there are 18 Army brigades, each with about 3,500 soldiers. At least 13 more brigades are scheduled to rotate in. Two others are in Afghanistan and two additional ones are set to rotate in there. Also, several other brigades either are set for a future deployment or are scattered around the globe.’

Army Too Stretched If Iraq Buildup Lasts

Camel train

Mystery deaths hit Saudi camels

Nearly 2,000 camels have died in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia due to suspected poisoned animal feed.

So far this month 1,982 camels have died. Symptoms include sweating, excitability, vomiting and fainting.

The country's Agriculture Ministry has said tests suggested the deaths were caused by animal feed which was contaminated by insecticide.

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Gus: conspiracy? negligence? accident?  Whatever this is it shows the power of insecticide at destroying more than just a few bugs... Insecticides are dangerous to the planet... and we produce millions of tons of this stuff every year... we are poisoning the planet... see the disappearance of bees in Europe and the USA... probably due to insecticide of some kind...

From the prof himself


Afghanistan campaign well-meaning but futile

By Hugh White

Afghanistan is a dangerous place. Ask any Canadian; in the last few years, 55 of their soldiers have been killed there.

Headed for failure

And here we must be unsentimental.

Sadly, the ADF's mission in Tarin Kowt will most probably fail. The likelihood is that when our forces eventually withdraw, Afghanistan will remain much as it is today. Little if anything will have been achieved.

This is not the fault of the ADF. There is no reason to doubt that the men and women deployed on Operation Slipper are doing the specific jobs they have been given very well.

The question is whether their work can help in any material way to achieve the Government's wider strategic objective.

Professor Hugh White is the Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU

 

Iraqtown

Iraqi Prime Minister Assails Democratic Critics
By JAMES GLANZ
Published: August 27, 2007

BAGHDAD, Aug. 26 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Sunday extended his tongue-lashing of foreign politicians who have questioned his government, saying that two Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Carl Levin, needed to “start making sense again” after they called for his ouster.

Mr. Maliki, who previously reacted with anger to President Bush’s criticism of the Iraqi government’s lack of political progress, also lashed out at the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who called for Mr. Maliki to be replaced in an interview that appeared on Newsweek’s Web site on Sunday.

But Mr. Maliki appeared to reach a new level of stridency with his reply to Senator Clinton, of New York, and Senator Levin, of Michigan. In remarks at a news briefing that referred to the senators by name, Mr. Maliki said they had spoken “as if Iraq is one of their cities.”

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Gus: If Iraqi insurgency was a disease and US troops a "cure", the truth, as we know it in hospitals, tells us that a few recalcitrant diseases mutate to become more resistant to the treatment. Even if we increase the dosage (the "surge"), the treatment becomes inefficient as the disease builds up more resentment... In Iraq, the problem here is also exacerbated by the fact that the treatment was unnecessary in the first place, only administered by a snake oil merchant, after stealing more oil to bottle, to make some tidy profits...

History tells us, contrary to are-we playing-golf-at-APEC-Dubya's belief on Vietnam, the final outing is that the spruiker is tarred and feathered and driven out of town while the town-folks fight each others till they decide to do things more calmly... Our immune system usually has the final say in whether we live or die... treatment or no treatment... Snake oil does not cure anything and empties wallets...

Drugologistics

In my very humble opinion, the only way the US administration can "manage" Afghanistan is to encourage farmers to grow more poppies... Some hard-liners in the admin think that "agentorangeing" the poppy fields might be the only way to stop another bumper crop in 2007, higher than the record crop of 2006... But the fieldmarshalls of US troopers have noted with reason that would make farmers become enamoured with the Taliban since the US would be destroying their lively-hood.

Thus the only option left for the US administration is to fork out a couple of billion dollars, buy the entire crop and badaboom... No drugs on the streets in Chicago... The price of heroin goes through he roof... Now, all the US admin has to do is to release a mere 10 per cent of the product — at an inflated price of course — thus reducing the number of addicts AND recouping their original cost plus a tidy profit... All's well...

And the farmers in Afghanistan would be beaming while driving big Chevrolets sold to them by the US government who gave them the money for poppies in the first place... Many problem solved, including the Detroit crisis.

What to do with the rest of the poppies? The 90 per cent held back? A bonfire so huge, that it would send fumes to the hills where Bin Laden lives... The opiate in the air would drug entire populations including Bin himself... Stone out of his mind, Bin would be much less dangerous than sober, since it appears that sobriety leads to warmongering — considering our own Johnnee and Dubya himself...

The war on drug? No!... It should be "drugs for peace"...

Sure there would be a few victims but at least they would be "choosing" to be the victims of drugs, so to speak... Nothing much different from what is now...

The only problem is the nasty drug barons would go broke and that would be crook... That could mean war...

Bugger..