I get some photos from Iraq and want to share them with you.
Polish Mi-24 Hind is taking off from Divanyia Base at the sound of explosions nearby.
Polish BRDM after ambush.
URL=http://imageshack.us]
Polish 1-st Field Hospital.
Flags on ORP “Xavery Czernicki” - We fight together…
Great Pics Lancer - good allies to have 
Interesting! Thanks for sharing. What is the device that guy in the second last shot is holding? Some sort of detonator?
Doesn’t look like anything military. I guess improvised detonating switch.
I heard that most of troubles coalition troops have are because of improvised explosive devices set on the side of the road. Terrorists which had car full of unexploded stuff had also this box in their car.
You can imagine what they were planning.
Lancer44
Some pics from Iraq
Not too sure about the tank in the top picture GermanSoldier.
It appears to be a Challenger (1). Chally 2 is in use by the British Army now, and has been for about for about 10 years.
It also appears to be green and black.
Possibly from Granby (Gulf War One), but doubtful given colour scheme, probably taken during the problems in the Former-Yugoslavia.
Where did you get it from?
Is it just me or were we foolish to believe we could ever successful invade Iraq?
I look at it from a couple of points of view;
- Suddam needed to be eliminated.
- Once this happened we should have left and allowed the people to decide their own future
If I were Iraqi i would have cheered the coalition for their help and politely told them to piss off and get out of my country.
I may be over simplifying the matter but I do understand why these people are fighting back. They see us as an occupying force not unlike the Germans in WWII.
If we removed ourselves and looked in on the situation from an outsiders prospective we would possible see these people as freedom fighter or a resistance movement.
Welcome to corporate America my friend we don’t fight wars to gain peace its all about who’s going to make the next dollar in which many billion have been made with this war through our political chain that we have in America .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkTmbkYbS60 This is the reason why this man holds a PHD’s in many subjects .
Hi Cam77,
Are you aware that you just blue the Mr.Bush’s cover up? It is nice to hear that some people openly acknoledge that the official reasons (the Weapons Of Mass Destruction) was a hoax.
At least it is a beginning…
The last thing Syria and Iran want to see in Iraq (or Afghanistan if it comes to that), is a pro-Western constitutional government feeding cheaper oil to the world. They are both vieing for mastery in the region and will continue to use ‘puppets’ that come in various forms to de-rail any Western initiatives. Once the coalition forces remove themselves from Iraq, the power-vacuum which this creates, will result in a civil war that can only be won by those with backing from their neighbours.
At the moment, it seems the coalition are doing a good job of making themselves unpopular with the local populace. I believe that regardless of the rhetoric from the British government, behind closed doors they are looking for the easiest way out without loosing too much face. If anything, I would say that plans are already in motion.
Iraq is now largely irrelevant to the interests of the US led Coalition of the Self-Deluding in Iraq.
It’s about Iran, which threatens to link with the Shiite majority and Shiite-dominated government in Iraq to establish and extend Iranian hegemony in the Middle East.
Among other things, this then brings Iran into conflict with the relatively weak Sunni Saudis who to a fair extent rely upon American support for the continuation of their medieval regime which has been busily using its vast petrodollars for decades to export the radical Wahabbe brand of Islam to its Sunni adherents in the West, where they are now encouraged by many Saudi-sponsored imams to pursue a vigorous anti-Western, pro-Islamo-fascist line. Wahabbism is a milder form of intolerant, arrogant and violent Islam than the bin Laden brand which ranks Saudi Arabia No. 2 after America as the enemy of pure Islam because the Saudis, among other things, allowed and indeed invited the American and Western infidels onto the holy soil which contains Mecca in Gulf War 1. Perhaps the most dangerous form of virulent Islam is coming out of the madrassas in Pakistan which lead a charmed life because Musharraf saw which way the wind was blowing after September 11 and promptly switched Pakistan’s support to the West while having done nothing since then to stop the virulent Islam based in Pakistan, which is linked to bin Laden et al. As long as Musharraf keeps supporting the West even though Pakistan still has significant elements actively working against the West, inside and outside Pakistan, America will keep supporting Musharraf. Is this getting a bit confusing? It’s not my fault. That’s what the geniuses running the world have managed to achieve, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of this international and religious idiocy which threatens to take us all into a cataclysmic conflict that will last for decades, perhaps centuries.
Back to Iraq. Having destroyed the bulwark that Saddam’s regime presented to Iranian hegemony in the Middle East, the Coalition of the Silly is now left with the problem that it has to contain a virulently anti-Western, anti-Israel, nuclear-ambitious Iran run by an Islamic Hitler to achieve the West’s own aims, which don’t include Iran being top dog in the Middle East. Not to mention an Iran energised in its anti-Western attitude by the unhelpful comments of Bush the Stupid about it being part of an Axis of Evil, and an Iran made more fearful of being attacked by the US by such comments and the not entirely strategically comforting position of finding itself between Afghanistan and Iraq after US invasions of those countries.
So, like it or not, the Coalition of the We Didn’t Think It Through Properly, If At All, Before Starting This Mess is stuck in Iraq to contain Iran. For the foreseeable future. Which will only create more tension with Iran, which has the not unreasonable fear that it is the next target. Which it would be, if America was willing and able to re-introduce conscription, but as long as it has to rely on its badly over-extended volunteer army Iran is reasonably safe. As long as it doesn’t do something stupid. Given the Persian Hitler currently running it, it almost certainly will do something stupid sooner or later.
Meanwhile the vast bulk of the killing in Iraq is along sectarian, tribal, vengeance, and political lines by locals and imports, which has absolutely nothing to do with the presence in Iraq of the Coalition of the Wilfully Blind to History and Reality, apart from that Coalition creating the conditions which allowed this misery to be inflicted upon the Iraqi people and being a powerful symbol to rally mujahadeen from elsewhere to join the fight against the evil infidels.
So far as one can deduce from events, it seems that the mujahadeen strategy is to drive the infidels out of Iraq by a novel form of asymmetric warfare based on a cunning plan of Muslims slaughtering other Muslims until the infidels give up. Quite how this could work is unclear, but given growing public and political sentiment in America for cutting and running and leaving the poor bloody Iraqis to wallow and suffer and die in the mess created by the Coalition of International Bastardry, it seems to be working surprisingly well.
None of this makes any sense, but from the perspective of any of the participants it seems to make enough sense to keep pursuing the impossible dream that all participants seem to hold that success can be achieved only by digging the current hole deeper.
Can’t speak for the U.S. but in the UK recruiting figures are down as no one wants to volunteer for what is seen to be an unpopular war. Tony (Yo, Blair!) Blair, in particular, has lost all credibility as Prime Minister, hence his imminent resignation. If the labour government wants to win the next eletion (which they do), they had better be getting their backsides out of Iraq ASAP - but they already know that. The war in Iraq might drag on indefinately, but I doubt you’ll see British troops participating in that scenario.
As I understand it, the US have extended the tour of their troops from 12 months to 15 months.
The region in question is really that from the Mediteranian coast through to the Pakistani border with India, with certain off-shoots to Arabia (as RS pointed out) and East Africa.
If it was an conventional war ( i mean with fronts, people in uniform,etc) the coalition probably won several years ago…but given the guerrilla/terrorist tactics used by the enemy I would say…very hard.
from a link to tuchman on another thread.
The last of Tuchman’s studies concerns The United States’ involvement in Vietnam. This is, in some ways, the weakest section in The March of Folly, for Tuchman’s own biases, for instance in her brusque dismissal of the popular anti-war movement (see p. 366 et al.), do colour it to a certain extent. The author is, however, entirely scathing in her portrayal of high-level American policy-making at that time. There are eerie parallels here with the British actions prior to and during the American War of Independence, for the Americans faced the Viet Cong, once again, through a fog of arrogance and ignorance, refusing to learn the lessons of Dien Bien Phu and grossly understimating the VCs’ willingness to fight (There are also, by the way, some similarities between Vietnam and the recent situation in the Persian Gulf, except that whereas Clinton has accepted a U.N.-brokered peace agreement, Johnson refused to go along with the one put together by U Thant in 1964). And, as in the case of the American Revolution, capable military and political men warned those in power about the certain and dreadful consequences of their policies, and yet those policies were still pursued.
The Coalition did win the conventional war several years ago, and very convincingly.
It’s the peace that it’s losing.
This is a media fabrication, working on the assumption that if soldiers are being killed then others will not join.
Shortfall for 2004/2005 was 1197. At the start of the year it was low then it increased to the end with a surplus in the last ¼.
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/D4C5FC87-61D1-496D-8853-6D0685F7F4F4/0/atra_ara_04_05.pdf
In general the army is down in 05/06 by 1.2% with recruiting at 84% (7770) of the target 9230. Retention has increased with numbers dropping by 1%, which in most cases is better than recruiting increasing. This is born out by my conversations with the local recruiters who are filling their quotas very quickly. Flash to bag for some corps is now taking months to get them in. And unemployment in my area is low.
Page 19
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/D3B9236A-D0BC-47E1-9B4E-71758B52C543/0/modannual_report_0506_psas.pdf
Perhaps, you are right, but my comments come from a more worthy and better informed source.
I should correct this.
It’s the occupation that the Coalition is losing.
It won the war but never achieved peace.
Good links. Will give them a little more study when I can get the time.
regards