The United States is losing its fight against terrorism and the Iraq war is the main reason, more than 80 per cent of American terrorism and national security experts have said in a survey.
One expert, former CIA official Michael Scheuer, said the war in Iraq had provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza and a valuable training ground.
"The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on terror," said Mr Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, a book highly critical of the Bush Administration's anti-terrorism efforts. "It has made everything more difficult and the threat more existential."
Mr Scheuer, a former CIA counter-terrorism expert, is one of more than 100 national security and terrorism analysts surveyed in the poll by Foreign Policy magazine and the Centre for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank headed by John Podesta, a White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration.
Of the experts surveyed, 45 identified themselves as liberals, 40 said they were moderates and 31 called themselves conservatives. The pollsters weighted the responses so that the percentage results reflected one-third participation by each group.
Asked whether the US was winning the war on terror, 84 per cent said no and 13 per cent answered yes. Asked whether the war in Iraq was helping or hurting the global anti-terrorism campaign, 87 per cent said it was undermining those efforts.
A similar number, 86 per cent, said the world was becoming more dangerous for the US.
AN ARMY WHERE WOUNDED SOLDIERS ARE ON THEIR OWN
Iraqi Army soldier Ali Katham Hussein would have a Purple Heart if he were in the U.S. Army. But he's received no medals for valor. He can't even afford to have the shrapnel and bullet lodged in his chest removed.
Neither can the Iraqi army.
"In Saddam Hussein's time, if you got hurt, you received compensation," he said.
Three months ago, insurgents ambushed Ali Katham Hussein's unit near Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. Hussein was shot nine times in the attack -- bullets pierced his chest, stomach, arm and leg.
Leaning on a crutch on a dusty, trash-littered Iraqi army base in west Baghdad, he pulled up his shirt to reveal two moist bandages taped to his chest.
"After I got shot, I didn't get treated in a military hospital," he said. "I paid from my own pocket to get treatment."
In fact, there are no Iraqi military hospitals. Like all injured Iraqi soldiers, Hussein had to pay for his own treatment at an Iraqi civilian hospital.
read in full...
Neither can the Iraqi army.
"In Saddam Hussein's time, if you got hurt, you received compensation," he said.
Three months ago, insurgents ambushed Ali Katham Hussein's unit near Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. Hussein was shot nine times in the attack -- bullets pierced his chest, stomach, arm and leg.
Leaning on a crutch on a dusty, trash-littered Iraqi army base in west Baghdad, he pulled up his shirt to reveal two moist bandages taped to his chest.
"After I got shot, I didn't get treated in a military hospital," he said. "I paid from my own pocket to get treatment."
In fact, there are no Iraqi military hospitals. Like all injured Iraqi soldiers, Hussein had to pay for his own treatment at an Iraqi civilian hospital.
read in full...
George Bush and the Haditha massacre
"If laws were broken there will be punishment." Really? The war itself is a violation of international law, along with the abuse and torture of prisoners, the kidnapping of alleged terrorists, their rendition to torture regimes allied with Washington, the network of secret CIA prisons, and the denial of due process and Geneva Convention rights to those swept up in America's international dragnet.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, the military chiefs and others who plotted and launched a war based on lies are the prime law-breakers. And the Republican and Democratic leaders and media yes-men who promoted the war and continue to defend the occupation are their accomplices.
Haditha was a war crime, and of a particularly gruesome sort, because the perpetrators systematically cornered and executed men, women and children over a span of five hours. But what of the destruction of entire towns, such as Fallujah and Tall Afar, in which thousands of innocent civilians died? These are hailed by Bush and the media as great victories.
Such is the carnage inflicted by the American occupation upon the Iraqi people that, at least according to some US press reports, the horrors that occurred in Haditha have not yet made a major impact on the consciousness of the Iraqi population.
read in full...
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, the military chiefs and others who plotted and launched a war based on lies are the prime law-breakers. And the Republican and Democratic leaders and media yes-men who promoted the war and continue to defend the occupation are their accomplices.
Haditha was a war crime, and of a particularly gruesome sort, because the perpetrators systematically cornered and executed men, women and children over a span of five hours. But what of the destruction of entire towns, such as Fallujah and Tall Afar, in which thousands of innocent civilians died? These are hailed by Bush and the media as great victories.
Such is the carnage inflicted by the American occupation upon the Iraqi people that, at least according to some US press reports, the horrors that occurred in Haditha have not yet made a major impact on the consciousness of the Iraqi population.
read in full...
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