From the BBC

Washington diary: The other face of Bush
By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

It's official: George Bush has been misunderstood!

George Bush: Out of sync with Congress?

The man who gave the world jitters with his "let's go it alone", "you're either with us or against us", "smoke 'em out!" rhetoric and who peppered his speeches with words like pre-emption, evil and axis has turned out to be a soft centred, fuzzy-lipped moderate who cannot stop talking about globalisation, inter-dependence, nation building and the UN.

Yes, Bush in his second term is the nice guy! The rank and file of his own party are now the nasties. Last week's row over the Dubai ports deal was a case in point.

Potus talked himself hoarse pointing out that the United Arab Emirates is not just a moderate Middle East nation that hates and fears al-Qaeda, it also happens to be one of America's closest allies in the war on terror and a port which the US Navy uses as an essential staging post for its missions.

No-one seemed to be listening

read more at the BBC

from the ABC

US launches biggest air assault since 2003
The US military says it has launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, to root out insurgents near a town where recent violence raised fears of civil war.

Announced with media fanfare just hours after Iraq's parliament held a brief first meeting that did nothing to end a political stalemate over forming a government, the US military said 50 aircraft were taking part in the raids north of Baghdad.

The US military released to the media photographs of troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopters lined up in a row for the offensive. There were no pictures of warplanes.

A defence official at the Pentagon, who asked not to be named said it was a relatively large, but sought to downplay the scale of the operation.

"It's not precision bombs and things like that," the official said.

Another official said it was "predominantly" a helicopter operation that involved UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and other aircraft and the insertion of ground forces.

A military statement said "Operation Swarmer" involved more than 1,500 Iraqi and US troops and 200 armoured vehicles targeting insurgents active near Samarra, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad.

A defence official in Washington said 600-700 of the troops involved were Iraqi government forces. The rest were Americans.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said the offensive showed Iraqi forces, some facing accusations of cooperating with the rebels, are increasingly capable of securing the country.

Gus: no comment...

From the ABC

The US military has launched several major offensives against Sunni Arab insurgents since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, including one involving several thousand soldiers that captured the former rebel stronghold of Falluja.

There were also a series of assaults in the rebel heartland in western Iraq's Anbar province which failed to hurt the insurgency and infuriated Iraqis who dug their loved ones out of the rubble after US air strikes.

Security crackdowns were also carried out near Samarra, the the site of a bombing attack last month on a Shi'ite shrine that set off sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war.

The military statement said the offensive was launched on Thursday morning and is "expected to continue for several days as a thorough search of the objective area is conducted".

"Initial reports from the objective area indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-(bomb) making materials, and military uniforms," said the statement.

The US military has issued frequent statements about the capture of arms, but Iraq is still awash with weapons.

As it has done in the past, the U.S. military made a point of saying both American and Iraqi forces were taking part in the operation in an apparent bid to show that rebuilding of Iraqi forces was making progress.

The United States has 130,000 troops in Iraq. Washington has said it will begin withdrawing troops as US-trained Iraqi forces take over security.

But US military officials have said few units were capable of fighting insurgents on their own, let alone protecting people from suicide bombings, shootings, and kidnappings....
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Gus thinks that wiping out insurgents only encourages new insurgency by a factor of ten... Do we think that the innocent people of fallujah who got burnt by phosphorus bombs or shot while they were leaving town are thankful of the US "freedom" that is dispensed like US free bomb...? Bu the insurgency may go underground for a while until time for revenge... who knows...

US military eyes coal as fuel source

Saturday 18 March 2006, 23:42 Makka Time, 20:42 GMT

The US military uses nearly a dozen different fuels at present

The Pentagon is trying to persuade investors and the energy industry to embrace an 80-year-old technology to turn coal into liquid fuel to power planes, tanks and other battlefield vehicles.

Officials have been crisscrossing the country, meeting energy companies and state government officials to sell them the idea. At the same time, military researchers have been testing fuel produced by the process to make sure it is suitable for military vehicles, especially older ones.

The military is worried that political pressure or terrorist acts could cut the flow of oil from the Middle East or hurricanes or terrorists could destroy US refineries.

William Harrison, the senior adviser for the Pentagon's Assured Fuels Initiative, said: "We know what the technical challenges are, but we don't see any show-stoppers. There is still a level of uncertainty, but it looks like the technology is mature enough."

Building coal-to-fuel plants is expensive - possibly up to $5 billion. Investors worry that their money could go up in smoke if the global price of oil drops, budding government subsidies dry up, or tougher environmental rules are put into place, said Kevin Book, a senior analyst for Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co Inc

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM), suggested recently that the U.S. may maintain permanent
bases in Iraq. But the U.S. has even grander plans in the region, according
to Washington Post blogger William Arkin. "The U.S. military has developed
a ten-year plan for 'deep storage' of munitions and equipment in at
least six countries in the Middle East and Central Asia to prepare for
regional war contingencies," according to Arkin.  

The plan is revealed in March 2006 Pentagon
contracting documents, and it calls for "the continued storage of
everything from packaged meals ready to eat (MREs) to missiles in Bahrain,
Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, as well as the establishment of two new storage hubs,
one in a classified Middle Eastern country 'west' of Saudi Arabia ('Site 23')
and the other in a yet to be decided 'central Asian state.'"

In the early days of this site, Gus "claimed" that the US was planning to stay in Iraq for at least 25 years and build 4 major solid state (bunkers and permanent housing) bases in Iraq. This was deducted, gleaned and extracted directly (mainly) from US documents (2003-2005) relating to fighting wars in the future...

From these came the "Warrior of the Future" illustration on this site.

That Dubya is already passing the buck to the next president (80 per cent chance in will be Condi) to solve his mess, is a indictment on how our consuming spirits are managed... The advertising campaign for the war has been structure thus: that we buy the war like we buy a car and we thus accept a contract to maintain warranty that stipulate that we have to return to the dealer for "service" that has to be done at regular interval at OUR cost...

Some of the cost are also absorbed by the dealer but these are already factored in the average of the purchase price of a car... In the case of Iraq, the only contract that we have amorally signed to is that "in order to minimise terrorism our OUR back yard, we create terror (more faults) under the guise of fixing a problem that did not exist in the first place...

Under these conditions where technology and secrecy go hand in hand, we are unable to grasp the true nature of the lemon we've bought, because most of the economic dials still work, twiddle to perfection by crook mechanics...

And the real cost is human lives... Dollars are peanuts,,,

When the Sunnis and the Shiite come to realize that most of their bickles are actually "helping" the US to stay there for another 25 years, then they might unite and take charge of their destiny... but then the price tag put by the US on the liberation might cost them another arm and a leg... or bury them once more...

The US needs X (bases in Iraq) so that they can control the flow of petrol... Anyone who has read and understood Bertold Brecht "Mother Courage and her children" would know that....