Bremer leaves Iraq suddenly...

Drudge/Yahoo ^ | Reuters

[ClintonBeGone]

U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, has left for Washington at short notice and canceled a meeting on Tuesday with visiting Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the Polish delegation said.

Officials in the U.S.-led administration had no immediate comment on Bremer's trip to Washington

[NutCrackerBoy]

Very tough, aggressive measures are needed against the insurgents right now. Whenever the Coalition military does this, Iraqi occupation resentment goes through the roof. There must be a form of Iraqi sovereignty so that an Iraqi military police force can act with legitimacy.

The high-level consultation is so that the CIC, Rice, Rumsfeld et al can craft something with Bremer.

[TexKat]

Lets see what transpired yesterday:

(1) In the latest attack on the oil sector vital to Iraq's reconstruction, three gunmen opened fire on an oil company executive's car, wounding him in the leg and killing his son.

The attempt to kill Mohammed al-Zibari, an executive responsible for oil distribution in a state-owned company, took place on Monday in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

The incident was believed to be the first assassination attempt on an Iraqi oil firm manager. Attacks on the oil industry have largely focused on attempts to sabotage the main oil export pipeline to Turkey.

A top oil ministry official said officials had now abandoned plans to reopen the line until an Iraqi force can secure it.

(2) Women in black, beating their chests in a traditional Mulsim mourning ritual, and men with black banners condemning U.S. troops took part in al-Kabi's funeral on Monday. Mourners carried his coffin draped in an Iraqi flag through the streets.

(3) Bremer told Britain's Times newspaper U.S.-led occupation forces would not be driven out of Iraq because the price of failure was too high for the country and for the Middle East.

"We're going to have increased attacks and increased terrorism because the terrorists can see the reconstruction dynamic is moving in our direction," Bremer said.

"It will be more of a problem in the months ahead unless the intelligence gets better," he added, saying hundreds of fighters from Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia had entered Iraq.

"Technically the line could be operated right now but we decided to wait until we put together an Iraqi protective force to guard it," he said, without giving a timeframe.

[VOA]

Quick side-bar, please,
I know I'm like a broken record, but here goes...
NOW HEAR THIS ALL LURKERS/POSTERS:

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH IS THE DEADLINE for inexpensive Parcel Post mailing of miltary
care-packages to our BEST AND BRIGHTEST who will be stationed far from home for the holidays.
...some of these folks will be spending their first Thanksgiving, Christmas and
New Years away from home and family, in one of the about 160 countries...

TIME to:
SHOP
BOX
and
MAIL

for shipping advice, see threads at these URLs:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1003802/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/997310/posts

REMEMBER, THE CARE-PACKAGE YOU SEND WILL BE A FOND MEMORY FOR SOME VETERAN YEARS FROM NOW...
That is all...At Ease!

[WL-law]

yeah right. and his sons were killed the first night of the war too. those guys we killed in Mosul were doubles.

Well, time will tell whether you're right or I'm right.

BTW, it's a very easy thing to prove you're alive (unless you're not, of course) and it would benefit Saddam and Osama both (and greatly embarrass the US in the eyes of the world) to prove that they are alive.

But it never happens. Why?

[texasbluebell]

Or he could be a target of plot

That was my first thought.

[thinktwice]

In other words, we're going to back out on some of our prior commitments.

The war in Iraq is not a staged operation.

Whatever is necessary to win a war takes precedence over wishful thinking.

[hankbrown]

it's a very easy thing to prove you're alive (unless you're not, of course) and it would benefit Saddam and Osama both (and greatly embarrass the US in the eyes of the world) to prove that they are alive.

Because he is so paranoid that he does not trust anyone to even make the video that would prove he is alive?

[rwfromkansas]

What did he say?

[Quilla]

How would that embarrass us? I believe the vast majority think they are both alive. The CIA just recently authenticated bin Laden's voice from an audio tape. Government officials state that Saddam is behind the recent attacks against our troops in Iraq.

[rwfromkansas]

real?

[TexKat]

US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is seen through a television viewfinder as she is interviewed at the White House in Washington, DC(AFP/File/Paul J. Richards)

Iraq attacks are not war: Rice

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush's national security adviser said in an interview that the rising death toll in Iraq is the price to pay for US security and does not signal a return to all-out war.

"Major combat operations have not resumed in Iraq by really any stretch of the imagination," Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) told a Seattle, Washington television station as part of an aggressive White House public relations campaign to build support for US-led efforts there.

Rice blamed "dead-enders" still loyal to Saddam Hussein's regime, as well as non-Iraqi fighters, for recent attacks on US-led forces, but said most Iraqis back the occupation.

Bush has drawn increasing fire for declaring major combat operations over in a May 1 speech aboard a homebound aircraft carrier, with a banner behind him proclaiming "mission accomplished" in Iraq.

More US troops have been killed in combat since that triumphant photo opportunity than during the original March invasion.

With Bush leading US tributes on the Veterans' Day holiday, Rice told several local television stations that he "mourns every loss" of US soldiers in Iraq but that "nothing of value has ever been won without sacrifice."

"It's very sad, and the president mourns each loss. But the sacrifices are necessary for the long-term security of this country. We must stay this course. Our will will not be broken," she told the Seattle channel, KING.

Bush has come under fire in some quarters for not attending any funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, but he has met with troops wounded there and privately spoken with relatives who lost loved ones in the campaign.

In several exchanges, Rice linked the US-led invasion of Iraq to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites) by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaeda network.

"The president made clear that we were going to fight this war on the offensive. We were not going to sit back and wait to be attacked again," she told KHOU-TV of Houston, Texas.

"We learned on September 11th that we can't just sit back and expect our oceans to protect us. And so this is a war, this is an effort that will make America more secure," she added.

Rice, who rarely gives such interviews, also acknowledged that steadily eroding public support for US-led stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Iraq had forced the Bush administration to step up its outreach efforts.

"It is extremely important in difficult times -- and these are difficult times in Iraq -- that the president and his advisors get every opportunity to speak to the American people," she said.

"The American people need to understand what's at stake here. And so it's important to get that message out," she said.

[nuffsenuff]

In a nut shell, he said that they were considering taking the gloves off and bashing some heads if attacks continued in some of the hot spots like fallujah.

[Lazamataz]

U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, has left for Washington at short notice and canceled a meeting on Tuesday with visiting Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the Polish delegation said.

My a-hole is puckering. Sounds like Al-Qaeda is on the verge of a strike.

[diamondjoe]

Yes, but wasn't that OBL tape made several years back? I mean, I have JFK on tape, but that doesn't mean he's alive.

[TexKat]

Thanks seamole for the link.

[oceanview]

well, let's not even talk about the CIAs motives.

why didn't Uday and Qusay make a tape? why bother proving they are alive to us? the best thing from Saddam's point of view would be to continue fostering these attacks in hiding, force the US to withdraw, and then emerge one day and retake the country. I'm not saying that would happen, but that must be their thinking, and they have a long term view. In the US, everything must be done "within X months", these guys are thinking in terms of years.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

Both dead.