Iraq: U.S. Troop and Mercenary Escalations

Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
vimothy said:
In any case, surely if we follow Stiglitz's arguments through to their logical conclusions, it would be more efficient to pull out all troops and just bomb Iraq with money.
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fat-joe-make-it-rain.jpg


MAKE IT RAIN
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Not sure where to put this, but it deserves a nod:

Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death", was arrested in Thailand on Thursday and accused of seeking to buy weapons for Colombian rebels, Thai police said.

Bout, the target of an international arrest warrant and U.S. sanctions, was picked up at a Bangkok hotel after he entered Thailand on February 29. Police were searching for an associate.

Bout was attempting "to procure weapons for Colombia's FARC rebels", the Thai police said in an arrest report.

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is fighting a four-decade old insurgency against the Bogota government.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Bout in October 2006, seizing his fleet of cargo jets and froze other assets.​

Good news indeed.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
vimothy said:
Not sure where to put this, but it deserves a nod:

Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death", was arrested in Thailand on Thursday and accused of seeking to buy weapons for Colombian rebels, Thai police said.

Bout, the target of an international arrest warrant and U.S. sanctions, was picked up at a Bangkok hotel after he entered Thailand on February 29. Police were searching for an associate.

Bout was attempting "to procure weapons for Colombia's FARC rebels", the Thai police said in an arrest report.

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is fighting a four-decade old insurgency against the Bogota government.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Bout in October 2006, seizing his fleet of cargo jets and froze other assets.​

Good news indeed.
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Bout is said to be the inspiration for the Nic Cage character in Lord of War.

Edit: there was a good long piece on him in one of the papers i read recently which i'm failing to find via google (but was either guardian or times). Not only did he sell weapons to all sides in everything, seems the CIA were still defending him and the govt agency that issued the warrant had to go behind their back.
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
crackerjack said:
Bout is said to be the inspiration for the Nic Cage character in Lord of War.

Edit: there was a good long piece on him in one of the papers i read recently which i'm failing to find via google (but was either guardian or times). Not only did he sell weapons to all sides in everything, seems the CIA were still defending him and the govt agency that issued the warrant had to go behind their back.
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Didn't the US use him and his teams in the early days of the Iraq occupation?
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
vimothy said:
Didn't the US use him and his teams in the early days of the Iraq occupation?
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Believe so. Some turned against him when they found out he was selling to the insurgetns too. Others just shrugged and said "that's business". Wish I could find that article (pretty sure now it was a G2 one), it was illuminating.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
"U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal of combat troops from the country, according to senior American officials," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The draft agreement sets 2011 as the goal date by which U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq, according to Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Humood and other people familiar with the matter."​

EDIT: Combat troops (combat troops something like 25% of US forces), mind.
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Is this not even worthy of comment?

Ominous news mixed with the good at Abu Muqawama...

But let's stick with the June 2009 date for a moment. This date is important. You see, Dr. iRack has also heard from his contacts that this is the key date for transitioning the remaining Sons of Iraq contracts to the Iraqi government. There are currently 102,000 SoIs. The U.S. goal is to integrate about 16,000 into the ISF by the end of 2008, and provide another 26,000 civilian jobs -- a total of 40 percent of the SoIs would then be off the American rolls. The goal is then to transition the remaining 60 percent of the contracts to the Iraqi government to manage. Dr. iRack was under the impression that this was to occur on January 1, 2009 -- but he's now heard that it will happen in June 2009. Yes, that's right, the same June.

If true, this cannot be a coincidence. Instead, it likely represents a demand from the Iraqi government made during the SOFA negotiations. It makes sense that if the ISF will officially be "in the lead" in Iraqi cities in the summer of 2009, the Iraqi government would also want full control of the SoI program at that time. This means the Maliki government will be free to employ them if they so desire or, more likely, fire them, detain them, or use all that biometric and biographical information we've collected to do whatever else they see fit with them. Given the fact that Maliki and his allies hate these guys and, according to a recent interview with General Petraeus, the Iraqi government is purposefully slowing down the integration process, it is unlikely that Maliki and his buddies will be generous once they are in complete control of the program. And if recent behavior in Diyala and the newly reported crack down on SoIs in Abu Ghraib are any indication, things could get ugly.

So, if you're looking for a D-Day in Iraq, it just might just be June 2009, when U.S. forces are pulling back, no longer supervising the SoIs on a daily basis, and handing the whole shebang over the Iraqi government. Fireworks normally happen on July 4th in the United States. They may happen a bit earlier in Iraq.​
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
All Your Basra Belong To U.S.!!

Or it will, at any rate, when UK troops pull out of southern Iraq in May next year, as Brown announced two days ago.

Sorry, just wanted to use that title for a post.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
Blackwater Worldwide faces a humiliating ejection from Iraq after the Interior Ministry said today it will not renew the private security firm’s licence to operate in the country.

The decision was taken because of a shootout in September 2007 involving Blackwater guards that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, a ministry spokesman said.

If implemented, the exit order will be a blow for the North Carolina-based company, which is contracted by the US State Department to protect the sprawling US Embassy in Baghdad and all US diplomats in Iraq.

It is unclear when Blackwater guards, who number some 1,000, largely former US military personnel headquartered in Baghdad's Green Zone, will be asked to leave and whether they can continue to carry out their duties in the interim.

Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf, the Iraqi spokesman, said: "The contract is finished and will not be renewed by order of the Minister of the Interior ... It is because of the shooting incident in 2007.”
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5611311.ece
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Is this the default rolling Iraq thread?

What does everyone think about the SOFA? 18 months left... happy, cynical, indifferent -- what?
 
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