intrnational news

Markwes wrote:

floridafun wrote:

Markwes wrote:Real classy. Let's see if you feel the same way when someone takes shots at Obama.

long as they are shoe-shots i will laugh then too.

Really? You think it's funny when a journalist who his colleagues say "detested America" throws a shoe at the president? That explains a lot.

I think it's incredibly funny. It's a shame it wasn't a bomb instead. Then we'd have some true anarchy on our hands.

pez wrote:and kudos to the journalist for the nice toss.

If his journaling career doesn't pan out, I'm thinking a MLB team will go after him. Ozzie Guillen likes those brushback pitchers.

LTRT wrote:

floridafun wrote:...but not rebuild the infrastructure with the billions of us$ that were allocated to do but instead lined pockets and/or disappeared..

Iraq Reconstruction Report

Just in case you might've missed hearing about it.

just in case you missed these little tidbits, here are 2 i had in mind when i made my comment..

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/14/MNRD14NM49.DTL

"Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form in Baghdad and Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag - particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army - the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces - the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000." '

Powell's assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

"Hard Lessons" was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart Bowen, a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. At the end of his narrative, Bowen chooses a line from "Great Expectations" by Dickens as the epitaph of the U.S.-led attempt to rebuild Iraq: "We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us."

********which reminded me of this little press release from 2004...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/16/iraq_audit_cant_find_billions/

About half of the roughly $5 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds disbursed by the US government in the first half of this year cannot be accounted for, according to an audit commissioned by the United Nations, which could not find records for numerous rebuilding projects and other payments.

One chunk of the money -- $1.4 billion -- was deposited into a local bank by Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq but could be tracked no further: The auditors reported that they were shown a deposit slip but could find no additional records to explain how the money was used or to prove that it remains in the bank.

Auditors also said they could not track more than $1 billion in funds doled out by US authorities for hundreds of large and small reconstruction projects.

Humm, one article is from 2004

San Francisco Chronicle, now there's a paper I read everyday....just sayin'

but yes, I will admit, I missed those, thanks for supplying the info.

Markwes wrote:
I really wasn't responding to you, just to anyone who thinks this incident is a good thing. We all know how everyone here feels about Bush, and I think he could have done some things better myself. That's not the point. It doesn't matter to me that it was Bush. It's about our president being attacked. Call it a sign of disrespect if you want and assume most Iraqi's are glad he did it (since Jugo said that it must be true ), but the fact of the matter is that if that had been done in this country by an American journalist toward an Arab leader, we would be seeing massive rioting around the world.

I was originally somewhat ambivalent about this event, and slightly amused by the absurdity of it. After reading Markwes comments, I have to agree. This incident (in it's context) is an attack on our president, and as such is an attack (right or wrong) on our way of life. That said, I changed my mind and I'm pretty honked off about this.

LTRT wrote:Humm, one article is from 2004

San Francisco Chronicle, now there's a paper I read everyday....just sayin'

but yes, I will admit, I missed those, thanks for supplying the info.

fyi--i made a point of noting the year on the one connection to show its old news thats been investigated and found as a failure for at least 4 years.

are one of these more within your believability range? just sayin'

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59430

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,466986,00.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081214/ts_nm/us_iraq_usa_reconstruction

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_38/b3850034.htm

I dont know enough about the topic to have an informed comment that hasnt already been made, but I am very surprised to see such a pentagon-critical article in the Stars & Stripes, which I thought was all about morale and such...

i was surprised too..but frankly its nice to know they are printing all the facts instead of just the ones that make the upper level brass look good. after all there are likely bunches of the active duty folks that are well aware of this kind of stuff and feel sugar-pilled by alot of whats printed in their news.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/15/iraq-shoe-tosser-guy.html

lulz.

Jugomugo wrote:http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/15/iraq-shoe-tosser-guy.html

lulz.

Anybody else having trouble opening the link?

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:

Jugomugo wrote:http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/15/iraq-shoe-tosser-guy.html

lulz.

Anybody else having trouble opening the link?

negative

Damn. Seems to be dead for me right now. Ah well.

I got a 404

I got a 406

I viewed the animated .gifs, just fine...thank you Mr. Fios btw, they're funny.

Mort wrote:I was reading somewhere that a guy offered millions for a shoe that was thrown at bush

I read that also... If I were the reporter and could actually sell the shoe instead of sitting in Jail, I would aution the shoe off to the first rich bush hater that wanted to build a school in Iraq.

pez wrote:

Mort wrote:I was reading somewhere that a guy offered millions for a shoe that was thrown at bush

I read that also... If I were the reporter and could actually sell the shoe instead of sitting in Jail, I would aution the shoe off to the first rich bush hater that wanted to build a school in Iraq.

I'm assuming he didn't get the shoes back.

I'm still wondering if those in the Arab world that are treating the "Shoeicide Bomber" as a "Hero" realize that it's because of the intended target (Bush) and the American Soldier, that the guy even has the freedom now to do what he did without fear of being killed on site, or having his family killed and his wife raped? Granted I think he's still in prison awaiting the outcome, but it's safe to say he'll probably just get a slap on the wrist and told to go barefoot for a year as probation.

It's a pretty safe bet that had this been tried on Saddam, he would have been killed immediately and Saddam's sons would be having a killing spree / rape-fest with the guy's family.

Some articles are saying he's been roughed up... broken arm, broken ribs, internal bleeding...

pez wrote:Some articles are saying he's been roughed up... broken arm, broken ribs, internal bleeding...

any waterboarding?

pez wrote:Some articles are saying he's been roughed up... broken arm, broken ribs, internal bleeding...

I'd be inclined to believe this is closer to the truth. Old habits die hard.

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:I'm still wondering if those in the Arab world that are treating the "Shoeicide Bomber" as a "Hero" realize that it's because of the intended target (Bush) and the American Soldier, that the guy even has the freedom now to do what he did without fear of being killed on site, or having his family killed and his wife raped? Granted I think he's still in prison awaiting the outcome, but it's safe to say he'll probably just get a slap on the wrist and told to go barefoot for a year as probation.

It's a pretty safe bet that had this been tried on Saddam, he would have been killed immediately and Saddam's sons would be having a killing spree / rape-fest with the guy's family.

+

so your hoping they have a real appreciation of the difference between being raped and/or murdered by our military and our contractors instead of by their former dictator?

floridafun wrote:

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:I'm still wondering if those in the Arab world that are treating the "Shoeicide Bomber" as a "Hero" realize that it's because of the intended target (Bush) and the American Soldier, that the guy even has the freedom now to do what he did without fear of being killed on site, or having his family killed and his wife raped? Granted I think he's still in prison awaiting the outcome, but it's safe to say he'll probably just get a slap on the wrist and told to go barefoot for a year as probation.

It's a pretty safe bet that had this been tried on Saddam, he would have been killed immediately and Saddam's sons would be having a killing spree / rape-fest with the guy's family.

+

so your hoping they have a real appreciation of the difference between being raped and/or murdered by our military and our contractors instead of by their former dictator?

I'm not sure I see the handful of isolated incidents of collateral damage and or irresponsible decision making by US soldiers and their contractors as being equal to the Hussein regime... namely that we disciplined several soldiers for their conduct, and I think I read in ther news that despite the fuzzy justice meted out for the major blackwater indident they have now been removed from Iraq as a contractor. So I guess the fact that we didn't further shoot those calling for justice, along with their families there is an appreciable difference.

Your comment will likely get a nice rise out of a few others... cheers...