In response to Mark's post below about Lt. Col. West, I propse a 'solution' to the problem of having our military personell getting hung out to dry by 'certain people' in the Pentagon.
Now, we have all of these contracts in Iraq that need to be filled. We also have three of the countries who actively fought America's going into Iraq holding the majority of the the IOU's from the Hussein regime.
The contracts need to be filled and the debts need to be cleared or forgiven.
But, we also need to be given the ability to clean up Iraq of the remaining Baathists and fehdeyeen.
So, here is my plan,
If the countries that are currently barred from the higly lucrative contracts in Iraq want to be able to toss their hats in for bids they have to do two things:
#1 Forgive all of the debts run up by the Hussein regime. If they want, they can enter the country to reposess the equipment they sold to him. We will be awaiting them at the borders to inspect said equipment and it manufacture date.
#2 Let America write up a fifth accord to the Geneva Convention that covers soldiers actions in the new style war that we are seeing. They must the sign it and help us push it through.
In it we will include things such as the new rules for prisoner interogations, new rules that define the Gitmo prisoners, new rules that clear forces of wrongdoing in the case of human sheilds, and convenants for pre-emptive actions against terrorist states or those who sponsor them.
It is time for the fifth.
(That is a link to the four Geneva Conventions an the two protocols as published by the Red Cross. It is now, also in my links section.)
Posted by AnalogKid at December 13, 2003 03:47 AM | TrackBack"But, we also need to be given the ability to clean up Iraq of the remaining Baathists"
especially Karbala, where our military is placing Baathists into police positions with weapons and vehicles.
That's right,our military is hiring Baathists to police Karbala, the same one that usd to round up the residents for torture.
Punish all the nazi's, but when more than half the population and virtually all civil servants were in the party, it becomes less clear.
I'm sure that AK was referring to the baathists who are shooting at us, not at minor party hacks. Now, are the coalition forces using bad people? Sometimes yes, either because our intelligence on the ground is poor and we didn't know an individuals past. Or because he has needed skills and the local governor looks the other way is another issue.
Ad to the mix that you have tribal leaders vieing for power and the quickest way to remove a rival is to label him a Saddam supporter, so lying about someone is easy.
All of which points to a very confused situation, which is being sorted out. Mistakes are being discovered, and new ones made, but overall we're doing well. It's not pretty to watch, but making a democracy rarely is.
Still AK's point is well taken. New rules for the Conventions of war to cover the new grey areas would be helpful. They would remove the pious excuses for babying these killers because they fall between the cracks.
Posted by: Mark (puggs) on December 14, 2003 01:41 AM