Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

So I wonder if Bush and his cronies consider those "mercs" insurgents...? I mean if they can classify Iraqis fighting an occupying force as "terrorist insurgents," can't you call civi heli contractors on the American side the same thing?

It's almost amusing when money and propaganda get mixed, too bad so many people are suffering and dying....:(

RH

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

The enemy is easy to identify he is the one who's media your not watching...

Lunar

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

So when do we Aussie taxpayers get our rebate: next financial year? No doubt there may be a few Poms wondering when their taxpayers' quids are going to be reimbursed,too :rolleyes: :hmm:

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

I've heard there aren't enough takers for the job of covering those 'busy' 17km from airport to green zone in a bolkow 105:eek:
Salary now up from £100,000 to £150,000 for any future "merc's".

I wonder what your life expectancy is, doing a job like this.
Surely a young whipper snapper perched on a flat roof somewhere waiting for a 105 to go over, just shoves a stove pipe down your rear from 200yds off and you're a statistic and you didn't even see it coming???? Painless I suppose.

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

Oh dear, people are using the “M” word. Surely we must be PC!

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

i'm 100% with lunar.
sas,
in australia we also pay....waste money on the war this isnt a U.S. war, but it should be. Many australians died in vietnam.
have you ever heard about them?:(

jacob.:hmm:

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

7,

I fought alongside those very soldiers....and lost good friends while we did so.

I flew combat missions supporting the Australian units.

No slur was meant by my previous comment....I was responding to the earilier post that was directed to the American side of the coalition.

My response was directed towards the folks that are peeking through the knotholes in the fence while others fight this war on terrorism. That certainly is not the Australians and Brits who have been stalwart friends for a very long time.

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

SASless,

There are wars on terrorism, and there are big stupid mistakes. I think the distinction is not a small one, and those folks you make fun of were absolutely correct in their initial assessment that there was no reason to attack a country that was not an imminent danger. No WMD, no link to terrorists, no danger, no war.

Wrapping yourself in the flag works in the US, because we are stupid enough to blank our minds when the flag is brought out. Thus we forgot about 'Nuclear clouds" as the reason why we HAD to rush into this tragic opera. Such jingoism doesn't work in the real world. The folks that you think are "peeking through the knotholes in the fence while others fight this war on terrorism" are correct in thinking that the US "wasted thousands of lives attacking the wrong country while terrorists laugh at us."
Of course, when we label the Iraquis who attack their invaders as "terrorists" while we drag out the flag, it helps your lips frame the words easier, doesn't it?

For those who say "we are there now and must try to make things right" there is an element of truth in that (I have a son in Kirkuk) but that shouldn't create any amnesia as to who made the mistake, and how they made it so we don't just do it again tomorrow to some other country.
For every heart-breaking shot of a little girl killed by an insurgent bomb, there is a shot of an innocent Iraqui killed by a stray American bomb or bullet, unfortunately. Of course, if you listen to FOX news, those terrorist weddings are a big part of the danger, and so they must be bombed.

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

Regardless of the reasons, we are there now and must try to make things right.
For those who would like hear a different take on what is happening there, instead of the commercial network dribble, sit down and read this Blog all the way way through. It's very interesting.

http://michaelyon.********.com/2005/05/little-girl.html

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

Nick,
As I have said many times....one can take the short view or the long view of the war against terror. A short view makes Iraq look like a terrible mistake...a long view will show it to be much different.
You will recall we occupied Iceland during World War II.....I am sure there are some that would take issue with that concept. It was done as part of a much larger plan of action. I would suggest establishing a democratic government smack in the middle of the Middle East in the long term...will prove to be the right move in the long term.
Go back and build a chronology and casualty list of the terrorist attacks that have been connected to the Middle East....and explain to us how you would solve that problem. You were at the WTC shortly after the attack there...what limit do we place upon ourselves in a "War" against terror?
Do we make like boxers...swapping punches....or do we go after them like an old time southern rat killing at the corn crib?
That the Iraq war has been grossly mishandled is not an issue...it has been. Name one war that has not been...just one please?

An example of one area where we are failing to do a good job....

Iraqi Intelligence Documents: Saddam Trained Thousands of Terrorists at Iraq Training Camps
Jim Kouri
January 7, 2006


In one of the least reported stories in the history of journalism, documents and other materials confiscated by the US military in the wake of the Iraq invasion revealed that Saddam Hussein's regime trained thousands of terrorists inside Iraq.

According for Stephan Hayes of The Weekly Standard, Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion. Hayes cites documents written in Arabic and photographs recovered and confirmed by eleven US government officials.

"The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence," wrote Hayes in his expose' for The Weekly Standard.

Many of the over 8,000 fighters were from terrorist groups with close ties to al Qaeda, including the Sudanese Islamic Army. It's believed, based on the Iraqi intelligence documents translated, that 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000, says Hayes.

"Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing."

The documents cited include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq War.

Why isn't this revelation being trumpeted in Washington? Because it exposes the ineptness of the intelligence community and would embarrass many political leaders who maintain that there were no ties between Saddam and radical Islamic terrorist groups.

According to Stephan Hayes, "It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and US intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years."

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals working on the "DOCEX" project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "At this rate," he says, "if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff."

Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists, since David Kay and his Iraq Survey Group--who were among the first to analyze the finds--considered those items top priority. "At first, if it wasn't WMD, it wasn't translated. It wasn't exploited," says a former military intelligence officer who worked on the documents in Iraq.

In November 2005, Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra wrote to John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence. Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, submitted to Negroponte a list of 40 documents recovered in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan and asked to see them. The documents were translated or summarized, given titles by intelligence analysts in the field, and entered into a government database known as HARMONY. Most of them are unclassified.

For several weeks, Hoekstra was promised a response. He finally got one on December 28, 2005, in a meeting with General Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence. Hayden handed Hoekstra a letter from Negroponte that promised a response after January 1, 2006. Hoekstra took the letter, read it, and scribbled his terse response. "John--Unacceptable." Hoekstra told Hayden that he would expect to hear something before the end of the year. He didn't."I can tell you that I'm reaching the point of extreme frustration," said Hoekstra.

Other members of Congress--including Rep. Dana Rohrahacher and Senators Rick Santorum and Pat Roberts--also demanded more information from the Bush administration on the status of the vast document collection.

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

SASless,


With regard to the writer of your previous article. We can all cut and paste...


Weekly Standard staff writer and author of the book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (released on June 1 by Rupert Murdoch's publishing house HarperCollins), Stephen F. Hayes has appeared in recent months on numerous cable and Sunday talk shows to support his contention that there was indeed a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Despite vigorous critiques that have undermined the credibility of Hayes's contention, conservative pundits have embraced Hayes and his book in order to, in the words of Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow Daniel A. Benjamin, "shore up the rickety argument that Baathist Iraq had posed a real national security threat to the United States."


Questions surrounding Hayes's journalistic credibility have been documented by Media Matters for America. His book, which largely relies on the leaking of a discredited Defense Department intelligence memo, was released by the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins and has been vigorously promoted by Hayes in the pages of the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. On February 17, the British daily newspaper The Guardian published a report of Murdoch's support for the Iraq war and the resulting bias in Murdoch-owned media outlets. In addition, the Murdoch-owned New York Post on June 27 gave Hayes's book a glowing review. The review was written by Kenneth R. Timmerman, a senior writer for the conservative Washington Times' sister publication, Insight on the News; in April, Media Matters for America documented Timmerman's assertion in Insight on the News that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq but that the media has chosen to let the story go unreported.


If you have any interest in reading more of this long article have a look at...


http://mediamatters.org/items/200406300014


For every view there is an opposite and equal view. If we are going to post in support or against something then lets use our own words, it's more intertesting.


Lunar

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

Understand that. Just would like to see our guys getting a little more money. For instance the 9/11 families got uncalled for Millions from the taxpayer and some poor Soldiers family gets diddly squat in comparison......
Thank the Politicians. Personally I would prefer to use elected officials for sandbags in a bunker. Just takes more of them than sand to hide behind.
The old saying Life aint fair, deal with it, comes into play........

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

SASless,
The problem with starting a war with a mistake is that people with brains remember the mistakes. If the war was initially sold as necessary for "the long view of the war against terror" it wouldn't wash, and it doesn't now.
It is easy for glib apologists to now say such things, but I ask you to tell me that this is the price Iraquis had to pay for the mistake:

http://globalfire.tv/nj/graphs/bagdad_bombing.jpg

This is enough to create a thousand "terrorists."

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

All I know is that if some country was rumbling around my town in tanks and Humvees uninvited, I beleive my friends and I could come up with some clever ways to inflict serious damage without standing in the open with an RPG.

I guess that would make me a terrorist!

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

>The problem with starting a war with a mistake is that people with brains remember the >mistakes. If the war was initially sold as necessary for "the long view of the war against >terror" it wouldn't wash, and it doesn't now.

Thank you Mr. Lappos.

The problem with the long view is that the Bush administration took it without actually listening to any competent intellect on the subject. It continues to scare the bee-jesus out of me the architects of this obscene catastrophe have been around since the good old Nixon days – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz. They had some misbegotten idea for the MidEast, the planets aligned with Bush #2 and 9/11 – straight out of the Project for a New American Century playbook and this is what you get.

And when they leave public “dis”-service, chances are none of them will be adversely affected in the least way by what they have wrought. Having a conscious, morals and ethics are prerequisites though. Oh, and a complete lack of shame.

Regarding the article SASless posted, how is it, with all the bad press coming out of Iraq, something like this hasn’t made it to the front page of say, the New York Times? Liberal media suppressing the “truth”? Come on. Any good, “factual” news supporting the lead up to the invasion and occupation would have been on national news immediately. There is none. Of course, this administration is paying for “good news” these days. It's all about the presentation, not the content. Like lipstick on a pig. As the well-worn saying goes, “You know they’re lying because their lips are moving.”

Ron Powell
Albuquerque NM

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

Frankly, Ron I am quite happy (and surprized) that no conspiracy has developed WMD's and planted them. The stark reality of the failure to find the weapons is an essential part of my faith in our system, and in the fundamental honesty of (even) the Bush administration. It says something when nobody tried to even fake it, doesn't it?

I have no idea what to say about that clown that SASless is quoting, who must have been dissappointed when he had to put down his research on black helicopters and big-foot to publish that article. Again, how the heck does HE get that data, when if it really existed, Condi Rice would have it tatooed on her forehead?

Again, the fundamental honesty of the system is something to behold.

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

sasless,
"That the Iraq war has been grossly mishandled is not an issue...it has been. Name one war that has not been...just one please?"
Isnt it funny that all the blundered conflicts have in volved the USA? -in exception of the UK in the falklands, (total waste of time). cuba,vietnam, columbia,iraq.
and it seems that iran is next!
in regard to nicks photo. do you see any terrorist bases in the pic. it seems to me that we're looking at a photo of a CIVILIAN RESIDENTIAL AREA being destroyed!
jacob.:{

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

Jacob, you are a 15 year old school boy. No offense, but some of these gentleman have a little more "life" experience than you do. This might be a good time to listen rather than talk.

Off topic, have you approched a company about working as a Hanger Rat yet Jacob?

Re: Iraq Gigs?
 

The Weakly Standard neocons are hanging by a straw and Hayes' main source is Douglas Feith, nuff said.....