We can't defeat 2000-4000 al-Queda in Iraq

[Babsbrain]

Rep. Jack Kingston, R-GA just stated on CSPAN there are currently 2-4,000 al-Queda in Iraq.

According to the statistics gleaned from various sites including globalsecurity.org, it is estimated that there are 500 thousand US troops, Iraqi troops, coalition troops and troops-for-hire in Iraq.

If a half a million troops haven’t been able to defeat 2-4000 al_Queda in four years, then it’s time to hang it up. We’ve been whupped.

We have been expected to fund this war from the beginning, but from the beginning, we were to understand that we weren’t privy to the statistics of the war…like how many Blackwater employees were in Iraq….and how many al-Queda we were fighting.

Well, now we know.

[snappyturtle]

1. I saw Kingston on C-Span too and I don't believe anything

that comes out of his mouth. They haven't gotten anything right yet in the intelligence department so why in the world would they NOW know the number of al Quaeda in Iraq?

[sinkingfeeling]

2. The last thing I read was a Pentagon report that stated 800 to 1200 al Queda in Iraq.

I asked that question to my US Senator, Mark Pryor, in a letter dated 3/28/07 and I'm still awaiting my answer.

[Babsbrain]

3. Isn't it strange?

that we don't know or not privy to the numbers of our enemies?

This is a secret war...we just pony up the dough.

So far $502 Billion dollars spent and more to come...fighting a handful of pissed off guys. Bush should pull out just to save face that a half million troops can't kick the butt of a small group of dissidents.

[stillcool]

4. I don't think we will ever know...

What is Covert Action?
J.V. Grady, ICH
Septeber 21, 2005
The policy in Iraq is to keep the country destabilized and on the verge of civil war to show that it cannot govern itself and that it therefore requires the continued presence of American and British forces. The man accused of being behind much of the bombing going on there is Al-Zarqawi, a man known to be dead for some time now. Also, because he is (or, rather, was) a Sunni, bombings against the Shi’ia population, if blamed on him and the Sunni insurgents, can keep the pot of civil war simmering, thus giving further justification to keeping American and British forces there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, who is behind many of the bombings against the Shi’ia and Sunni populations? It is quite possible, even probable, that many of them are being carried out by American, British, and even Israeli Covert Action operatives.

So, when you watch the news, think more deeply about what you’re seeing; and when you read your newspapers, try reading between the lines or wonder about the source or the writer behind the article. Has the article been planted? Is the writer in the pay of an intelligence service?

J.V. Grady is a former member of US Military Intelligence
:: Article nr. 15994 sent on 22-sep-2005 00:14 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=15994

Moving Targets
Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?
by Seymour M. Hersh December 15, 2003
The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.

The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls “Manhunts”—a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon’s leadership to get his way. “Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,” a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.
-------------------------------------------
One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers—again, in secret—when full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one wants to talk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” on Iraq.) The critical issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is much debate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a practical—or politically effective—way to bring about stability in Iraq, especially given the frequent failure of American forces to obtain consistent and reliable information there.

Ghosts of Jadiriyah.
A survivor's testimony
One year after its discovery, the Baghdad detention facility synonymous with torture, clings onto secrets that could hold keys to Iraq’s sectarian violence
(Max Fuller 14 November 2006)
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/FullerJadiriyah.htm

US Funds Terror Groups to Sow Chaos in Iran
By William Lowther and Colin Freeman
Telegraph
February 26, 2007
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2007/0226sowchaos.htm

Worry Grows as Foreigners Flock
to Iraq's Risky Jobs
By Sonni Efron
Los Angeles Times
July 30, 2005
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/contract/2005/0730risky.htm
For hire: more than 1,000 U.S.-trained former soldiers and police officers from Colombia. Combat-hardened, experienced in fighting insurgents and ready for duty in Iraq.

This eye-popping advertisement recently appeared on an Iraq jobs website, posted by an American entrepreneur who hopes to supply security forces for U.S. contractors in Iraq and elsewhere. If hired, the Colombians would join a swelling population of heavily armed private military forces working in Iraq and other global hot spots. They also would join a growing corps of workers from the developing world who are seeking higher wages in dangerous jobs, in what some critics say is a troubling result of efforts by the U.S. to "outsource" its operations in Iraq and other countries.

In a telephone interview from Colombia, the entrepreneur, Jeffrey Shippy, said he saw a booming global demand for his "private army," and a lucrative business opportunity in recruiting Colombians. Shippy, who formerly worked for DynCorp International, a major U.S. security contractor, said the Colombians were willing to work for $2,500 to $5,000 a month, compared with perhaps $10,000 or more for Americans. But where Shippy sees opportunity, others see trouble. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, worries that U.S. government contractors are hiring thousands of impoverished former military personnel, with no public scrutiny, little accountability and large hidden costs to taxpayers. ----------------------------------------------------------------
Fijians, Ukrainians, South Africans, Nepalese and Serbs reportedly are on the job in Iraq. Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, author of a book on the private military industry, said veterans of Latin American conflicts, including Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans, also had turned up. "What we've done in Iraq is assemble a true 'coalition of the billing,' " Singer said, playing off President Bush's description of the U.S.-led alliance of nations with a troop presence in Iraq as a "coalition of the willing."

There are no reliable figures on the number of guards from Colombia or other countries. According to Shippy, private military experts and news reports, North Carolina-based Blackwater USA has sent 120 Colombians to Iraq. In addition, the firm reportedly has hired 122 Chileans. The reports are difficult to verify because many large companies, including DynCorp, which is based in Texas and operates in 40 countries, have policies against speaking to the media. Gary Jackson, president of Blackwater USA, said he had no comment.

Colombia & Iraq: Halliburton Makes the Connection
By Daniel Leal Diaz
World War 4 Report
January 17, 2005
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2005/0117coliraq.htm
The Bogota daily El Tiempo recently reported that the US military contractor Halliburton has recruited 25 retired Colombian police and army officers to provide security for oil infrastructure in Iraq. One of the men, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the officers met in Bogota on Dec. 2 with a Colombian colonel working on behalf of Halliburton Latin America, who offered them monthly salaries of $7,000 to provide security for oil workers and facilities in several Iraqi cities. The claim was confirmed by a Colombian government source, said El Tiempo, but denied by a Halliburton representative in Bogota. US media have reported that former soldiers from Chile, South Africa and Spain are being recruited to beef up Iraqi security forces.Halliburton, the oil services giant once run by US Vice President Dick Cheney, has won billions of dollars in Iraq contracts, but has been accused of overcharging and accounting irregularities. (Al-Jazeera, Dec. 13; AP, Dec. 17)-------------------------------------
The US has transformed Colombia's soldiers into some of the best mercenaries in the world through decades of a mutating war that never seems to end: communism, drugs and--the latest version--terrorism. As Halliburton exploits this expertise for the Iraq campaign, Colombia becomes poorer in every dimension: violation of human rights, indiscriminate violence, loss of sovereignty and a crumbling democracy.

Census Counts 100,000 Contractors In Iraq
Civilian Number, Duties Are Issues
By Renae Merle
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401311_pf.html
December 5, 2006
There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.

The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country.
........................................................
Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. MPRI, a unit of L-3 Communications, has about 500 employees working on 12 contracts, including providing mentors to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for strategic planning, budgeting and establishing its public affairs office. Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country.
........................................................
The census gives military commanders insight into the contractors operating in their region and the type of work they are doing, Wittkoff said. "It helps the combatant commanders have a better idea of food and medical requirements they may need to provide to support the contractors," she said.

Death Squad Democracy
By Mike Whitney
20 March, 2006
Uruknet
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-whitney200306.htm

Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq
by Max Fuller
Global Research, November 10, 2005
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FUL20051110&articleId=1230

[lectrobyte]

5. The Wolverines always win. Home field advantage and all that.