General betray us,did nt we already knew Iraq was a success,if a cronie of Bush was in charge of Iraq.?

Question

General petreaus or betray us, is getting pay by the oil companies to cook up the report on Iraq's invasion failure. As for the propaganda CNN is advertising for Bush tapes of Bin ladden, is just another fake information to keep the fear of another 911 in the American people who swallow anything Bush says.A reminder, we went into Iraq for WMD's not to get rid of it's population and loot their oil resources. Two, 911 was the act of a greedy mind in the white house with connection with the oil companies. So the war on terror is really and should be ridding the white house of those criminals who cooked 911 to get an excuse to invade iraq for it's oil resources.

Answer 1

You know what's interesting is that MORE Americans agree with you than agree with the ranting lies of the rightwing liars of the media.

But the things you are saying are TABOO. The rightwing LIARS are able to spew their lies 24/7, though.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070910/ts_nm/sept11_threat_dc;

Bin Laden escaped a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, and U.S. intelligence agencies believe al Qaeda has rebuilt in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who said after the September 11 attacks he wanted bin Laden dead or alive, shifted his focus to Iraq and cast it as the central front in a war on terrorism.

That shift may have played into bin Laden's hands.

"Part of what bin Laden's strategy is, is to bait us into situations where we bleed. Iraq is a godsend for al Qaeda. We took the bait," said security analyst P.J. Crowley of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning think tank.

The Iraq war made it easier for al Qaeda to kill Americans, through its al Qaeda in Iraq affiliate which is among the groups fighting U.S. forces in Iraq, said Mike German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent.

The war also created a rallying cry at a time bin Laden was crippled by loss of al Qaeda's Afghanistan sanctuary.

"No conflict drains more time, attention, blood, treasure and support for our worldwide counterterrorism efforts than the war in Iraq. It has become a powerful recruiting and training tool for al Qaeda," Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, co-chairmen of the U.S. government's September 11 investigation commission, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece on Sunday.

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Everything in the moveon.org ad was FACTUALLY CORRECT:


http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html

WHAT DID PETRAEUS KNOW ABOUT MISSING WEAPONS AND CONTRACTOR FRAUD AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501299.html

Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing
GAO Estimates 30% of Arms Are Unaccounted For

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 6, 2007; A01



The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking. Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers.

"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces. He cited the Iraqi brigade created at Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2004 and turned its weapons against the Americans.

Stohl said insurgents frequently use small-arms fire to force military convoys to move in a particular direction -- often toward roadside bombs. She noted that the Bush administration frequently complains that Iran and Syria are supplying insurgents but has paid little attention to whether U.S. military errors inadvertently play a role. "We know there is seepage and very little is being done to address the problem," she said.

Stohl noted that U.S. forces, focused on a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction after Baghdad fell, did not secure massive weapons caches. The failure to track small arms given to Iraqi forces repeats that pattern of neglect, she added.

The GAO is studying the financing and weapons sources of insurgent groups, but that report will not be made public. "All of that information is classified," said Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO's director of international affairs and trade.

In an unusual move, the train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces is being managed by the Pentagon. Normally, the traditional security assistance programs are operated by the State Department, the GAO reported. The Defense Department said this change permitted greater flexibility, but as of last month it was unable to tell the GAO what accountability procedures, if any, apply to arms distributed to Iraqi forces, the report said.

Iraqi security forces were virtually nonexistent in early 2004, and in June of that year Petraeus was brought in to build them up. No central record of distributed equipment was kept for a year and a half, until December 2005, and even now the records are on a spreadsheet that requires three computer screens lined up side by side to view a single row, Christoff said.

The GAO found that the military was consistently unable to collect supporting documents to "confirm when the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, and the Iraqi units receiving the equipment." The agency also said there were "numerous mistakes due to incorrect manual entries" in the records that were maintained.

The GAO reached the estimate of 190,000 missing arms -- 110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols -- by comparing the property records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered. Petraeus's figures were compared with classified data and other records to ensure that they were accurate enough to compare against the property books.

In all cases, the gaps between the two records were enormous. Petraeus reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 pieces of body armor and 140,000 helmets were issued to Iraqi security forces from June 2004 through September 2005. But the property books contained records for 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80,000 pieces of body armor and 25,000 helmets.

A military commander involved in the program at the time, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the report, acknowledged in an e-mail, "We did issue some items, including weapons, body armor, etc. to new Iraqi units that were literally going into battle."

But, the commander argued, "there was, frankly, not much of a choice early on: We had very little staff and could have held the weapons until every piece of the logistical and property accountability system was in place, or we could issue them, in bulk on some occasions, to the U.S. elements supporting Iraqi units who were needed in the battles of Najaf, Fallujah, Mosul, Samarra, etc."

The GAO plans to look for similar problems in the training of Afghan security forces.

During the Bosnian conflict, the United States provided about $100 million in defense equipment to the Bosnian Federation Army, and the GAO found no problems in accounting for those weapons.

Much of the equipment provided to Iraqi troops, including the AK-47s, originates from countries in the former Soviet bloc. In a report last year, Amnesty International said that in 2004 and 2005 more than 350,000 AK-47 rifles and similar weapons were taken out of Bosnia and Serbia, for use in Iraq, by private contractors working for the Pentagon and with the approval of NATO and European security forces in Bosnia.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701726.html

General Blames Clerical Errors In the Case of Missing Arms

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; A10



Bookkeeping deficiencies allowed thousands of weapons issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005 to then go missing, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said yesterday.

"Some percentage" of weapons the U.S. military provided to the Iraqi army and Iraqi police units were not tracked by serial number because there were no procedures in place to do so within the Iraqi units, Petraeus said in an interview broadcast last night on Fox News Radio's "Alan Colmes Show."

From a practical standpoint, Petraeus added, it was more important to get the weapons to the Iraqis as they started to enter the fight against a strong insurgency than it was to keep meticulous records.

"We occasionally likened it to building the world's largest aircraft while in flight and while being shot at," the general said. "But we gradually started putting those procedures into place."

A Government Accountability Office report last week found that the U.S. military has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces, and experts worry that many of those weapons could have fallen into the hands of enemies in Iraq. The report noted that 125,000 pieces of body armor and 115,000 helmets also were missing from inventory records.

Petraeus, who then led the security training effort, said Iraqi units were ready to fight but did not have the equipment they needed just as Moqtada al-Sadr's influence grew in the summer of 2004. He described one case in which U.S. forces flew into the war zone of Najaf at night, their helicopters under fire, and "actually [were] kicking two battalions' worth of equipment off the ramp and getting out of there while we still could."

"That type of decision was something that we made at the time because those forces needed those weapons and that equipment," Petraeus told Colmes. "We weren't going to stay there in the dark and make guys do a serial-number inventory and sign them up, and that is what happened. We believe those weapons all certainly were given to Iraqi units."

Petraeus agreed with the GAO that U.S. controls on weapons distribution later improved.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/axsdj4miy51q&printer=1

Bush Support for Locals May Speed Iraqi Fragmentation Ken Fireman
Mon Sep 10, 6:42 AM ET



Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's embrace of what he calls ``bottom-up reconciliation'' in Iraq may result in something he has repeatedly called unacceptable: the country's breakup along religious and ethnic lines.

Bush has lavished attention and money on Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who have agreed to fight al-Qaeda alongside U.S. forces. During a Sept. 3 visit, he called Anbar a national model and urged the central government to support it.

``When you stand on the ground here in Anbar and hear from the people who live here, you can see what the future of Iraq can look like,'' Bush said as he met with tribal leaders.

Skeptical American experts say that future may diverge from Bush's vision of a peaceful, unified Iraq. They say the tribal alliance, called ``Anbar Awakening,'' is one of the developments that has the potential to pull Iraq apart and erode the already weak authority of its national government.

``How you are going to build a political system out of a series of armed tribal leaders is beyond my imagination,'' said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ``We keep on saying that militias have to be disarmed. But what we are doing at the local level in Anbar province is arming more militias.''

Bush is showcasing the sheikhs as Congress begins a debate on whether to extend or end the military buildup he ordered in January. His original justification for it was to give Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government ``the breathing space it needs'' to enact measures giving Sunnis more political authority.

Political Goals

Eight months later, that hasn't happened, immediate prospects for action are bleak and Maliki's government is ``dysfunctional,'' the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, David Walker, told lawmakers on Sept. 4.

Facing that reality, along with a Sept. 15 deadline to report to Congress on what the troop increase has accomplished, Bush argues that the seeds of political progress are being sown at the local level and that they will eventually blossom.

``When you have bottom-up reconciliation like you're seeing here in Anbar, it'll begin to translate into central government action,'' Bush said during his visit.

Pentagon View

General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, is expected in testimony before Congress today to recommend delaying decisions on the withdrawal of the main U.S. force in Iraq until March 2008, the New York Times reported, citing unidentified officials.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is planning to build a major base on the Iraqi border with Iran and a series of fortified checkpoints to halt what it says is a flow of weapons and explosives from Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported, without saying where it obtained the information.

Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said the U.S. can support the tribes and also press the central government to move forward. ``We don't believe it's an all-or-nothing proposition, that either you ride this horse or you ride that horse,'' he said.

Kenneth Pollack, an analyst at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said Bush's strategy doesn't trouble him because ``a fully integrated Iraq'' is unlikely in any case and American support for the Sunni sheikhs might give the U.S. leverage over the central government.

Bush's Strategy

Other experts say Bush's strategy is hardly certain to succeed. Iraq's central government is dominated by Shiites who view the Sunni sheikhs as a threat. The sheikhs, in turn, are happy for U.S. support to chase out al-Qaeda and will take any resources the Maliki government may offer, yet haven't accepted its legitimacy.

``The fact that you can get people to sign a loyalty oath for money doesn't mean they're loyal,'' said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies who has studied Iraq for years. ``None of these people will ever love a Shiite-dominated central government.''

While the U.S. was touting its gains with Anbar Sunnis, the central government's legitimacy was eroded by the walkout of 15 Sunni Cabinet ministers last month. The GAO, citing a U.S. government interagency report, said the walkout ``ends any claim by the Shiite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity.''

Funneling Support

The U.S. strategy of funneling support to the Sunni sheikhs runs the risk of creating power centers that could challenge the government, according to a U.S. intelligence official who briefed reporters last month. Another risk is that the Sunni tribes may begin battling each other, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Such intra-sectarian conflict is already roiling southeastern Iraq, where two Shiite factions are waging a violent power struggle that the central government, Iraqi army and British forces in the area have been powerless to halt.

U.S. government data show that the four southeastern provinces generate 80 percent of Iraq's oil-export money and 70 percent of its government revenue, according to Cordesman.

Iraq's unity is being undermined in other parts of the country. Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq maintains the de facto autonomy it has enjoyed since the 1991 Persian Gulf war. In Baghdad, ethnic cleansing is driving Sunnis into internal or external exile.

Facing this reality, some U.S. political leaders, such as Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, have advocated a ``soft partition'' of the country, a notion Bush has never endorsed.

``It's a slow separation or fragmentation of much of the country into sectarian zones,'' says Cordesman, who visited Iraq last month. ``There are fault lines virtually all over the place.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at [e-mail]



Copyright © 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.

Answer 2

Do you guys believe EVERYTHING on moveon.org, by the way your grasp of the English language SUCKS.

Do you believe Petreaus when he says that we can start bringing the troops home, or is this a lie too.

CNN or as I call it Communist News Network is a leftist liberal news station, I would be shocked if they ever did anything to favor a conservative, I might even have a heart attack if they did.

I challenge you to show any proof that the US has taken any oil, though I would be the first to say that WE SHOULD, Al Gore sold half of the US oil reserves to Occidental Petroleum, this was the Elk Hills, California oil reserve, Al Gores father, Al Gore Sr. was a vice president of Occidental Oil

And there were WMD's found, not what we expected to find but found just the same.

Answer 3

you say 'shortly after'. Wonder what it was like before the invasion began. Besides that.... why must we fight for another countries liberation? To my way of thinking, a country should be asked if they want liberation first & the actual invaders who are there to promote liberty must want to liberate that country. If our own countries leaders were honest in the naming of the invasion, it would have been "operation take down hussein". The truth is in the planning, my dear. You need to take a little time to browse through some old newspaper's from 2001 - 2003.... This invasion was unplanned..... When it was time to abort the mission, because "we had won", we couldn't leave the mess that had been created. The mess was created because the country had been left without a leader. Nobody in charge of an entire nation... Looting, Gang -Forming, mass neglect - I am not saying that Hussein did a great job.... but, at least, the country was policed. The U.S. may be a super-power.... but we shouldn't get that confused with super-hero. The Invasion lacked the plan: 'what to do for leadership after the current leadership is taken down'.

Answer 4

Now I'll grant you that Bush and his family are in oil. That alone makes everything they do in regards to the middle east subject to some skepticism.

I don't know the General, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt because he has a mission. He's not going to betray his mission. Anything he reports is from the perspective of that mission.

Our president is a politician..... I'll let someone else defend him.

Your beef is with the politicians, the army didn't get us in to this.

Answer 5

I am an independent - and I was more than willing to hear what the General had to report. I am not afraid of adding a few facts to the mix in order to try and understand the reality of the situation in Iraq.
It was the democrats, however, who were slamming the four star patriot's report for more than an hour - EVEN BEFORE HE HAD SAID ANYTHING AND EVEN BEFORE THEY KNEW WHAT HE WAS GOING TO REPORT.
Could it be that they knew the report was going to contradict their agenda and before even hearing the report, they felt they had to go on the defensive and try to minimize its detrimental effect on their long standing policy of total defeat and withdrawal?
Sounds like a logical conclusion to me - why else would you slam a report before you even hear it unless you know the truth yourself and it doesn't support your position?

Answer 6

General Peterus is brought and paid for by the Bush administration, first he never used the term Civil War and more telling the only show he made a full presentation other than in Congress is a exclusive on Fox Noise, where he and W knew he would be well received and not be challenged on his so called dog and pony

Answer 7

Am I the only one who is simply tired of fringe people who go to the Hate Sites, and then cut & paste the crap from them every where they can? I just don't understand this kind of psychotic hatred. These people have nothing better to do than fill their head with propaganda and then try to get others to become hateful psychotics like they are?


Kent in SD

Answer 8

To put it simply you are an idiot. Gen. Pretreus was voted in by every member of congress without one dissenting vote. Isn't this testimony enough to the man's honesty?

Answer 9

you gotta be flippin' kiddin' me!!!
petreaus was unanimously approved by both parties.
he is the real thing - a good, honest hero that has more integrity in his pinky toe than you have in your whole misguided body.
too bad these same democrats that approved him started discrediting him before he had a chance to give his report.
you need to lay off the sauce!

Answer 10

And libs claim they 'think for themselves'. All these gullible idiots need is for someone to suggest a conspiracy, give them a few made up 'facts', and they're off to the races, each of them thinking they came up with the identical 'idea' on their own.

Answer 11

I wonder if YOU yourself is under the pay of the Islamic War Machine?