USIP event on US military presence in Iraq

6 thoughts on “USIP event on US military presence in Iraq”

1. The panel appears to be rather stacked, doesn’t it? And the lone Iraqi is a former (?) big time collaborator, too.

2. “By taking this nation into war on a lie, all of the killings of American soldiers in Iraq became unlawful killings, and therefore murders,” Bugliosi said.
   Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan had been sitting in the crowd, and she shouted, “Thank you Vince.”
   http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Angry_Cindy_Sheehan_exits_Judiciary_hearing_0725.html
   Helena, I wounder how you miss this? why you did not participate in this one?
   Rend al-Rahim
   “if Chalabi, Allawi, Rend al-Rahim and Kanan Makiya are acceptable figures, are people one feels one can talk to, it is not because they are Shi’a Muslims. Rather, it is because having lived in the West for many decades, they have become, at least in part, westernized and secularized. They are rational people, even if their aims must be different from ours. But they do not, and dare not, make any connection between the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual” with Iraq today.

3. The Stanford Daily
   News
   Thursday July 24, 2008
   Home
   Other Issues
   «Previous
   Archives
   This Issue
   Front page
   News
   Sports
   Opinions
   In conversation with the “Iran expert”
   Visiting Prof. of Political Science Abbas Milani
   July 24, 2008
   By Devin Banerjee
   “President Bush recently authorized William Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, to attend a meeting in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear program. The meeting, which was held Saturday, produced no developments after Iran responded with a written document failing to address international demands.
   In Geneva, officials from six negotiating partners — the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China — pressed Iran to accept a “freeze-for-freeze” proposal, under which Iran would cease enriching uranium, and the U.S. and other powers would not demand additional international sanctions against Iran. After Iranian officials failed to address the nuclear concerns at the meeting, the six nations gave Iran two weeks to formally respond to the proposal before it would be withdrawn…..
   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   Laurence Vance, a serious Christian writer and teacher, offers a dramatic counterpoint. In his latest book, Christianity and War, Vance collects 79 essays on military and foreign policy. He spares no one, declaring: “Christians who condone the warfare state and its nebulous crusades against ‘evil’ have been duped. There is nothing ‘Christian’ about the state’s aggressive militarism, its senseless wars, its interventions into the affairs of other countries, and its expanding empire.”
   The U.S., the most Christian nation on Earth, is also the most war-mongering nation on Earth. It’s as if they’ve taken the Lord’s advice, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” (Mat.5:9), and reversed it for their national motto: “Blessed are the warmakers, for they shall be called the children of God, because they stomp every nation they figure is an enemy of God.”
   It’s really pitiful that so many American Christians support the most unchristian thing imaginable, war, under the illusion that it’s God’s will and God’s way. They’re stuck way back in the Old Testament era, thinking that the U.S. is a modern Israel, performing God’s will in the world and smiting His enemies, when the reality is that the U.S. is like the great heathen empires of old, smashing and burning, looting and destroying nations and people just so it can have its own way, not God’s!
   So many U.S. Christians put their allegiance to the state above their loyalty and obedience to the Lord, above His Word, above reason, and certainly above justice and truth and love! They get their nationalism and their Christianity mixed up and they think that serving their country, even when it’s engaged in an unjust war, is the same as serving the Lord and fighting the battles of the Lord. They engage in carnal warfare, knowing so little about the spiritual warfare or the ways of the Spirit.Well, I can’t do the subject justice.
   Ted Rudow III,MA

4. Rend al-Rahim Francke
   She sees in the building an analogy to the situation in Iraq. ”You have a building which is proverbially attractive,” ”but all the systems are out of order.”
   Rend al-Rahim Francke is right when she talking about Iraqi embassy in Washington DC 2004,but if we see Iraq today after five years of US invasion and occupation of Iraq which Rend al-Rahim Francke very supportive to it, Iraq today very much so Rend al-Rahim Francke’s statement in 2004 applied now to a country which is proverbially attractive,’ but all the systems are out of order,’ and full of corruption and thugs!!!
   Helena, I wonder how you think you been with Iraqis like Rend al-Rahim Francke?
   Is that you accepting setting and discussing with Chalabi or Kanan Makiya which these guys was the horse for this war and invasion and occupation of Iraq?
   Rend Al-Rahim is Iraq’s Ambassador to Washington.
   REND AL-RAHIM: The Iraqi Governing Council has put out a statement that denounces the action against Dr Chalabi. There was no consultation with the Governing Council. The Governing Council had no prior knowledge of this whatsoever, and indeed the Governing Council has said that this was politically motivated.
   What your discussions will benefits from these proxies and corrupted guys?
   Helena, I see the road you walking taking you to a place under the Iraqi sun to taste Iraq’s walkcake? Isn’t Helena?
   BTW,
   Also known as Rend Al-Rahim Franche or Rand R. Franke, she fled Iraq in 1978 and has lived in the USA since then.
   I lived in Iraq for 40 years I finished my university in 1978, I have I served national service 21Months, I reserved in Iran war, I reserved Kuwait war, I met Iraqis from most Iraqi cities from far north to down south and from East to west, I was interested of tribal names and families, I have never ever heard there were a Shiites family “Wealthy” with name Franche or Franke??
   Helena its interesting if you get more info about here years in Iraq and if she speaks Iraqi accent!! I don’t know Helena if you knew Iraqi accent I hope you know to tell us more about this out of the blue”Iraqi” woman!!
   There is no public domain photo of Rend al-Rahim Francke. She is normally on TV programs which are of course copyright. She has been to press conferences which are also attended by the media and are again copyright. I cannot take a picture of her myself. There is no freely available picture of her. I spent considerable time looking for one. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Custodiet ipsos custodes (talk • contribs) 22:50, 9 May 2007 (UTC).
   Where should I go to get a free image of Rend al-Rahim Francke? I have looked all over th internet. I looked in the library. All photos were copyrighted. Dick Morris and Bill O’Reilly also use fair use copyrighted images. What is the difference? It is quite legal under fair use to use the photo I used. It conforms to the 1976 copyright act.Custodiet ipsos custodes 23:07, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
   In all seriousness why is it ok to have a copyrighted image of Dick Morris and Bill O’Reilly but not Rend al-Rahim Francke? In both cases there are not public domain photos available.

5. What is the point of defamation that nobody can understand?
   First let’s have a little more of it, with no major chunks unaccountably gone missing:
   Shi’a Islam is not wonderful. And if Chalabi, Allawi, Rend al-Rahim and Kanan Makiya are acceptable figures, are people one feels one can talk to, it is not because they are Shi’a Muslims. Rather, it is because having lived in the West for many decades, they have become, at least in part, westernized and secularized. They are rational people, even if their aims must be different from ours. But they do not, and dare not, make any connection between the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of the Islamic world, and the tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam.
   And then let’s make clear where it comes from:
   
   Dhimmi Watch
   April 30, 2007
   Fitzgerald: The School of Qom and the School of Najaf
   (…)
   Posted by Hugh at April 30, 2007 7:58 AM
   
   ___
   Now that that’s out of the way, the last word my pet google finds off-hand from Mme. l’Ambassatrice Rend al-Rahím is dated January of this year and ends
   With increased security has come a shift in Iraqi politics away from extremism and towards moderation. The concrete results of this shift in terms of legislation (and meeting “benchmarks”) have been few and far between, but there is now broad acceptance of the new constitutional regime, even while there are disagreements over how precisely it should be interpreted or implemented. There is also wider acceptance that such issues should be resolved within Iraq’s still weak fragile institutions on the basis of broad partnership, which means giving the Sunnis a greater role than their numbers in the COR [sc.,”Council of Representatives,” the I. Z. neorégime’s quasiparliament] justify.
   Despite these positive developments, many obstacles remain, and there is little time in which to surmount them, given the American pressures for continuing withdrawal. Triage may well be necessary, but if so it should be done in a way that respects Iraqi priorities as well as American ones. Legislation in general is not the top item on Iraqis’ minds. They are looking for a more effective government, one that can take security out of the Americans’ hands, get people back to their homes, deliver services, create jobs and fulfill the promise that April 2003 seemed to hold, but without the sectarian triumphalism that soon thereafter prevailed.
   So how about The panel appears to be rather stacked, doesn’t it? And the lone Iraqi is a former (?) big time collaborator, too?
   The lady appears to me to be collaborating still, although it would be useful to know what she thinks of poor M. al-Málikí now that he has become the Hannibal of Da‘wa, conquerer of Basra and Revolution City and Mosul and . . . and . . . . A lot of people still have that very traditional sort of effectiveness in mind when they go “looking for a more effective government.” Mme. al-Rahím is thoroughly westoxicated, however, and works, or used to work, for a soi-disant “Institute of Peace,” so she may or may not not be satisfied with martial prowess in isolation.
   A transcript of yesterday’s gabfest would be nice to have. Prof. Lynch has leaked that
   Rend al-Rahim laid out a devastating depiction of Iraq’s current situation, and – perhaps surprisingly – offered a wholehearted endorsement of Kahl’s description of Iraq and policy recommendations,
   so the ambassadress may be collaboratin’ more with Dr. Kahl than anybody else. The latter’s preferred scheme of imposition was summarized thus:
   Colin Kahl presented the Center for a New American Security’s “Shaping the Iraqi Inheritance” report calling for “conditional engagement”, arguing for the need to move away from ‘Iraq centrism’ (strategic interests actually exist beyond Iraq’s borders, if you can believe it) and ‘Iraq maximalism’ (holding our policies hostage to outcomes manifestly beyond our capabilities to produce).
   It is a little puzzling that even a nonlocal native of the former Iraq would wish those provinces to be decentred and dismaximated away from, though of course it would be commendable if Mme. al-Rahím has come to consider Peace in general more important than ex-Iraq in particular. She may, however, have become a card-carryin’ Republican rather than a disciple of Gandhi — you can get out of Rome by a wide variety of roads, after all. We are told where the centre is NOT located and what is NOT to be maximalised; when it comes to the positive side of the Kahl-Rahím Doctrine, it looks as if we need that transcript.
   How she scores the I. Z. neorégime on “sectarian triumphalism” I would not venture to guess. I’m not altogether sure how I’d score it myself. In January she clearly agreed with Ms. Conventional Wisdom that the Arabophone Sunnis must receive great gobs of Affirmative Action. That is not exactly what poor M. al-Málikí has actually done since, and I would not be surprised if it also fails to be the result of those much ballyhooed provincial elections that the I. Z. neorégime may or may not ever get around to conducting. It is not the fault of either M. al-Málikí or of “sectarian triumphalism” that twenty percent means only one in five and not one in two. Or fifty-one in a hundred. But whether Mme. l’Ambassatrice realizes as much, who knows?
   “[B]road acceptance of the new constitutional regime, even while there are disagreements over how precisely it should be interpreted or implemented” would be an odd way to describe the current Khalílzád Konstitution Krisis. M. de Tálebání and M. de ‘Abd al-Mahdí seems to be making their konstitutionalism up on the fly, and the innovations have not encountered much “broad acceptance” that I have detected. Indeed, the collaborationist pols appear to be pretty well split down the middle. Admittedly, it is not konstitutionalism as such that divides the International Zone Solons and Lycurguses, but more like who grabs what at Kirkúk.
   Oh, well. “Rend al-Rahim laid out a devastating depiction of Iraq’s current situation” — could that fuss be what she devastated Abú Aaardvark with? Poor guy, Neocomrade Dr. K. Kagan of Harvard and ISW and TWS and GOP managed to ‘shock’ him, and then along came Mme. R. al-Rahím of Cosmopolis or wherever to ‘devastate’!
   (It must be a really interesting transcript.)
   Happy days.

6. The same is true of Rend al-Rahim, who until recently used her American husband’s surname, Franke. A tireless worker for human rights in Iraq as head of the Washington-based Iraq Foundation, she was last week named the country’s first ambassador.
   Ms Rahim, an American citizen since 1987, will on Monday begin her new job of reestablishing Iraq’s embassy in Washington. The embassy closed 13 years ago during the Gulf war and all the country’s ambassadors were recalled as war clouds loomed in February. She left Iraq for boarding school in England, then went to Cambridge University and the Sorbonne in France, and also studied in Lebanon. She has been a banker and currency dealer.
   Ms Rahim was a founding member of the Iraq Foundation, which lobbied against Mr Hussein’s rule. She was among expatriate Iraqis the US invited to participate in creating the Governing Council – but she is little-known in the country of her birth.
   That aside, diplomatic recognition of Iraq’s interim ambassadors is a problem. In the case of Ms Rahim, the US – as the administrator of Iraq – is technically appointing an ambassador to represent its own interests.
   The strangers who represent Iraq.
   Source: Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
   Publication Date: 06-DEC-03

Comments are closed.