Musharraf backs talks with Taliban
Exclusive: Pakistan's President shrugs off increased militancy in border region
SONYA FATAH
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 23, 2007 at 2:00 AM EDT
ISLAMABAD — Peace in Afghanistan will not come out of the barrel of a gun, Pakistan's besieged President, General Pervez Musharraf, said in a wide-ranging interview in which he suggested that talks with the Taliban and other opposition may be necessary to bring stability to the war-torn country.
“We have to have a multipronged strategy. In Afghanistan it is only the military strategy which is working now,” Gen. Musharraf said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
“[The] political element is the negotiations between warring factions. Who are the warring factions? Warring factions are the Afghan government and the coalition forces on one side and the militant Taliban and even non-Taliban … so some form of negotiations between these two.”
“Maybe, there are groups who want to give up militancy and negotiate … so I can't lay down whether you negotiate with the Taliban, but [if] they want to go on fighting, you don't negotiate with them, take a military angle. You negotiate, you develop contacts with people who are not for fighting.”
Taking little responsibility for the growing sense of political instability in Pakistan and increased militancy along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a defiant Gen. Musharraf insisted that Pakistan was the only country that had a military, political, developmental and administrative strategy to defeating extremism.
“I would tell everyone: Come and learn from us. We are sitting here knowing exactly what is happening on ground,” he said. “You sitting in the West don't know anything. So, don't teach me, come and learn from us. Come and understand the environment. And then decide on what has to be done and what doesn't have to be done. We are doing more than any other country in the world.”...
By Garrett Therolf, Los Angeles Times May 20, 2007
BAGHDAD -- Two of the three US soldiers missing since a May 12 ambush south of Baghdad are believed to have been alive as recently as two days ago, but the third might be dead, the military said yesterday as it broadened its search for the men.
The soldiers have been the focus of a huge dragnet by US troops, who have detained more than 700 people for questioning in and around Yusifiya, a market town 10 miles south of the capital.
Army General David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, expressed optimism that at least two of them were still alive a week after their outpost was ambushed in the region known as Triangle of Death.
But he said the military still does not know definitively the fate of the missing men, Specialist Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.; Private First Class Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif.; and Private Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich....
I'd like to compare and contrast the reporting of a recent event in Iraq whereby American soldiers were slaughtered in large numbers in one day. I think the reporting by the Associated Press is the most alarming and appropriately so. It also allows readers to understand there were a huge amount of Iraqi deaths as well involved in all attacks.
There is also notably no preventive measures to stop these attacks. They are anarchic, random and very violent. The reasons can be as varied as the people committing the attacks. Where there is little understanding to the motivation behind such incidents there is no chance of preventing them. I don't believe there is sufficient intelligence to stop this violence.
I don't believe the USA military's application by General Patreaus of 'insurgency' tactics was at all justified. He didn't have 'a plan' for the dismantling of any KNOWN insurgency. He simply had numbers of troops now at his disposal in hopes the insurgency would be intimidated and perhaps 'by chance' be overwhelmed. That is not a strategy. A strategy recognizes the battlefield and applies a 'plan' to carry out victory.
By RAVI NESSMAN Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD -- A roadside explosion outside the Iraqi capital on Sunday killed six American soldiers and a journalist, the military said, among 12 U.S. deaths reported on a day when two car bombs killed at least 44 Iraqis at a Baghdad market and a police headquarters. A car bomb in the capital, where U.S.-led forces are in the midst of a crackdown on sectarian violence, killed at least 30 Iraqis. At the police headquarters in Samarra, a volatile city in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb and shooting attack killed 12 police -- including the police chief.
American soldiers racing to the headquarters to help also came underattack by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades that left two soldiers wounded, the military said....
Bush's "Surge" is an abject failure. In this article of The New York Times, the reality of the slaughter is watered down in the paper's attempt to create understanding where there should be none. By 'making excuses' for USA soldier's deaths, it allows Petraeus an unjustified reality. See, the reason for the increase in the killing of USA soldiers is because 'The Surge,' a creation by Petraeus in his expertise of insurgency has realized this is going to be a reality until the USA is on top of the insurgency.
The reality of the Iraq insurgency is that it continues to grow. We have seen all this before but in smaller numbers. As the USA 'again' creates another 'strategy' to defeat the insurgency, the opposition leaders 'stand down' long enough to realize the breath of the USA reposturing only to 'come at it' from a stronger vantage point. There is nothing in this Patraeus strategy that hasn't been tried before only on a 'somewhat' smaller scale. About 20,000 troops smaller. What is not reported anywhere by any media service is the continued increase in maiming and disabling injuries to USA soldiers that makes the increase in numbers of troops simply mute.
I simply hate having a General with a 'brain child' to foster. Know what I mean? Every person carrying a weapon, which is nearly everyone in the Middle East, is 'game' for the retaliation of violence. And what do we know about this form of violence? Violence begets violence. Yes?
June 21, 2007
14 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq in 2 Days (click here)
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAGHDAD, June 21 — Fourteen Americans were killed in combat in five incidents, most in Baghdad, in a 48-hour period ending Thursday, the military announced.
Notably, only one American soldier has died in the major military operations in Diyala Province, where 300 to 500 fighters for the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are believed to be hiding. That death occurred earlier in the week.
Suicide bombers struck Thursday in northern Iraq and in Baghdad. In the area around Hilla, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, a joint Iraqi-American operation was under way to capture or kill members of the Mahdi Army, the militia linked to the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
Most of the American deaths over the past two days were caused by roadside bombs, which were used in three of the five incidents. These bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, have been the biggest killers of Americans.
The higher casualties are partly a result of the higher number of American soldiers now in Iraq as part of the Baghdad security plan that started in mid-February, officials said. The troops are at full strength now and are beginning operations in areas they had previously been unable to enter. The use of ever-more-powerful roadside bombs has also increased the number of casualties....
And lastly I want to take a look at FOX and it's ludicrous 'hiding' of reality. This was also an Associated Press release they chose to publish. It is grossly obscure and I suppose one might say it was 'premature' in it's presentation. One of those 'breaking news' things that the media claims to be so necessary. In this article there is absolutely no implication of any American deaths in these attacks. And what is more clear than anything is that the 'identity' of Iraqis is virtually unimportant. We don't know whom these people are, what their hamlets/villages are all about or what meanings there lives have.
I have purported over and over again, that the USA has never and continues to be inadequate in providing security for the people of Iraq. Yet, over and over again we are told by every media voice in the market place that the militias are the enemy. Really? And by who's word are we to believe that? Every USA General passing through Iraq on the way to retirement?
The fact remains as it has for every USA operation in any foreign country that the people, the so called insurgents, that battle back against the damnable force of the USA military which is grossly misdirected by Bush and illegally engaged are 'faceless.' They are considered the enemy, whether or not they truly are. All this considering the USA has never provided a 'livelihood' for these people, allowing 'no bid contracts' to USA companies whereby the security there is provided by USA military as well as private mercenary armies. What is the USA doing by protecting private USA companies with USA employees when the people of Iraq have no jobs, no money, no electricity, no clean water and no reasonable and reliable source of food? Who do you think the insurgents are? Radical Islamists or hungry ones !?!?!?!?
Associated Press - June 25, 2007 3:23 AM ET
BAGHDAD (AP) - Suicide bombings in Iraq have killed at least 16 people today and wounded dozens more. 2 of the attacks were aimed at US military targets but there's no word of any American casualties.
Eight people died in a suicide car bombing in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. It's the second deadly attack there in three days.
Six civilians were killed when a truck bomber struck a police station in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.
This, after another deadly weekend for US forces. At least 12 soldiers were killed on Saturday.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The "Breaking News" syndrome that has become an addiction in the USA, especially the cable market, doesn't allow for completeness when reporting happens of even the facts they believe Americans are interested in or allowed to be interested in by their government FCC office and certainly doesn't take the time to do anything about providing a complete picture of an event including the entirety of the people involved and why, so much as a 'flash point' for Bush rhetoric and lies.
