At Least Four Dead in Iraq Attack on Spaniards

Reuters to My Yahoo! ^ | Nov. 29, 2003 | Anon

[Pharmboy]

LONDON (Reuters) - At least four and possibly as many as eight members of a Spanish intelligence team were killed on Saturday in an attack on their convoy south of Baghdad, a reporter from Britain's Sky News television said.

David Bowden said in a report from Baghdad after returning from the scene that he saw four bodies and that locals said eight were killed in total and another two people taken prisoner. Spanish officials said in Madrid an eight-strong team had been attacked and it was unclear how many were hurt.

"We were actually driving from the town of Hilla, which is just south of Baghdad, and we saw these men lying dead on the floor (ground) by the side of the road after the ambush," Bowden said.

"We were told by locals there that...about 30 minutes before they'd attacked a convoy of three vehicles. They pulled the people out of the vehicles. They told us that in fact they'd killed eight people and they'd captured two others.

"I only saw with my own eyes four dead bodies on the road.

"We filmed for a couple of minutes and then we became the focus of the mob's attention. They were shouting praise to Saddam (Hussein) and we disappeared pretty quickly."

[zarf]

Disprove my claim.

You can't.

[Captain Kirk]

I never stated that Japan was full-fledged democracy, only that it had a history of competitive elections and some democratic traditions, a history that was far stronger than that of Iraq's. These elections in Japan during the 1920s were genuine and highly competitive...though the power the militarists ultimately overwhelmed this experiment.

As to your claim that the emperor had "complete" control, any historian of Japan would find that claim to be laughable. The emperor certainly exercised some power (mainly as a tie breaker between factions) but the 1930s the militarists in the army and navy had predominant control.

[Dog Gone]

Try to familiarize yourself with the powers reserved to the Emperor under the constitution of 1890, and then continue to argue that Japan was a liberal democracy. I want to see that.

[Captain Kirk]

Thanks for the cc....though, of course, let's be clear that Dog Done, not me, made that absurd statemetn.

[Captain Kirk]

That's dog gone not dog done though I plead guilty to the charge that it was Freudian slip in this case.

[Dog Gone]

My claim of "complete control" was directed toward the period when Japan experimented with democracy. Clearly, by the 1930s, the military was calling the shots, and the Emperor was their useful idiot.

[vbmoneyspender]

Our basic war strategy is to never fight a war on American soil. So what could possibly possess you to suggest that we should fight the war here on our borders? The enemy is in the Middle East, so that is where we are taking the fight. Things can't get much more straightforward than that.

[Destro]

One other point-while Japanese democracy did fail. It must be remembered that for 100 years the Japanese as a society were actively seeking to emulate Western modes of thinking, which included representative democracy. So even though it failed in the 30s that Japanese people knew that it should be the direction they should be going. In fact the militay kept of the pretense of a parlimentary system because of that.

Germany of course had a long and strong history of democracy, even under the Kaiser.

[Will_Zurmacht]

Well, I guess you guys are probably right.
We should bring our troops home asap. We can put them to work building fortifications around town. I guess it probably is better to fight the jihadi's on the streets of Boston as opposed to the streets of Baghdad.
Logistically, we'd eliminate a lot of supply problems.
If the Israeli's can get used to this stuff, why can't we?

And if we never try to rebuild Iraq, or promote a better way of life in the middle east-then we can't honestly be accused of failing!!
Perfect solution!

And while we're at it, we should probably pull our forces out of Afghanistan as well. God knows it was wrong of us to remove the Taliban and impose our ideas of human rights on those good folks. We should invite Osama and Mullah Omar back to Kabul, after an apology for all our attempts to change their "culture".

Because, as you say, our efforts to impose modernity on 7th century fools are doomed to fail, we shouldn't even bother trying.

Americans then can use our remaing years on this world hunkered down like frightened animals in our bunkers, waiting for one of these nuts to get them bomb and use it.

Maybe if we all just run away and hide, the bad men will be nice to us!

[Captain Kirk]

What Ba'aist or Iraqi nationalist ever attacked us before 9-11?

[Destro]

So Arabs are going to mount an invasion of America? Last al-Qaeda invasion against us was mounted using the latest in box cutter technology.

[Captain Kirk]

Okay, I would still disagree. The Meji restoration was more in name than in fact, even in the 1920s. The emperor always had to share his power.

[vbmoneyspender]

Hey knucklehead, they were regularly firing SAMs at our pilots. But I suppose you think that firing missiles at Americans don't constitute attacks.

[Captain Kirk]

Sometimes some "solutions" are impossible, utopian dreams of creating a unified/democratic nation state in a Bosnia writ large like Iraq to the contrary. Sometimes, the most prudent thing is to use our national defense resources for home defense rather in a nation-building pipedreams. Life is full of trade-offs. Your trade-off is to chase phantoms in Iraq. Mine is to fortify our national defense.

[Captain Kirk]

Is that the best you can do? I suppose you also supported the Kosovo fiasco for the same reason (the Serbs fired on us)....and were disappointed that we didn't send our troops to "nation" build in Serbia too.

[Gritty]

We're dealing with subhumans here - read: Arabs.

I answered: This type of stupidity doesn't help our cause.

You answered: Disprove my claim. You can't.

Surely, even you can't believe that.

Arabs are as completely human as you or I. It is their Muslim theology/ideology that is sub-human. It comes directly from the Devil and is therefore "not human".

The fact so many of these people are completely deluded and act on it does not denigrate their humanity. It only confirms it. Man's inate propensity for sin sees to it.

[Elmer Gantry]

Key word in all of this: Hiroshima. The people of Iraq haven't experienced a massive defeat in this war. You had a Secretary of Defense at the start of this so called war asking for the commanders of Saddam's military to just step aside like good gentlemen and not fight; you had officials in Washington resigning because some art work was missing (entire feaking towns were "missing" in Germany and Japan, as in being blown off the face of the earth), you have officials bragging about building schools and hospitals, as if war in the 21st century is some pork barrel contest.

[vbmoneyspender]

I guess I am just funny that way, but I kind of take it seriously when people are firing missiles at Americans. As far as whether firing missiles at American constitute attacks on Americans, I think most rational people would agree that those type of actions are acts of war that need to be responded to.

[Destro]

Not at all. Kill the jihadists. Trying to convert them is a fool's errand. I want to teach the Arabs nothing. I want not to help them or to feed them. Starve them to death for all I care. (You were not expecting that from me?-read on)

Islamic culture is not compatible with liberal (small L) democratic Western civilization. Islam is an all encompassing way of life. It is both a political system, a social system and a religious system. Therefore our efforts to teach them to be just like the West will fail.

What we need to do is take the long term approach. One which I have opined about on this forum before.

We need to place in power puppet regimes where we can, but that is hard and it fails most of the time. Want to break the power of the jihad?

Cut off all trade with the Islamic world. That means no more F-15s to Suadi Arabia-cut off their technology, The Islamic world does not have any industrializtion base beyond what we in the West import. Ban that. No more factories for them. Mount punitive military raids whenever they build a military potential threat to the West and then go home. Keep them weak. Keep them unable to attack us.

Islamic civilization already collapsed once. When The Turks controlled the Middle East, the Europeans went West to try and get to Asia. Once alternate means of obtaining Eastern spices and goods was obtained the Islamic world lost its primacy. Islamic civilization, which was ahead of the West got poorer and weaker until the late 1800s and early 1900s it collapsed and was taken over by the West. Unfortunatly for the future WW1 and WW2 and the Cold War weakened Western civilization and the oil trade revived Islamic civilization.

Find alternate fuel needs. Cut the Muslims off. Raid them when needed to keep them down. Don't occupy them. Don't try and teach them.

Islamic civiliaztion would once again contract and collapse like it did 100 years ago.

You can keep your paranoid fears of Islamic armies invading Boston.

[Will_Zurmacht]

While I don't begrudge your desire to strengthen the homeland, I think we have done more in the last three years than chase "phantoms".
We should strengthen the homeland.
We should also take the fight to the enemy.
In doing so, we should also try to prevent the circumstances in which the enemy grows. This lies at the heart of our "nation-building" programs.

Will they be entirely successful-Absolutely not.
Is is worth making the effort-Absolutely.

As we have created some terrorist in Iraq due to our operations, we have also created some hope among the other citizens that they can, and indeed, deserve to live better than they have.
I know there is a segment of muslims who will hate us until they die. I also know that some love America, and others are still on the fence. These are the folks we have an opportunity to influence.
We forfeit that opportunity when we turn and run like cowards in the night.
And the elements in the middle east that hate us are emboldened by our displays of weakness. They only recognize strength.