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POPSMosul From the New York Times archives BY REV. DR. BACON. March 20, 1852, Wednesday Page 1, 1249 words Dr. BACON gave his second lecture on Eastern Travels at the Tabernac'e last evening, The lecturer proposed briefly to speak of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the adjacent countries. Tile section attended to embraces nearly all the countries noticed in the New Testament as having been visited by the Apostles of Christ--the regions most celebrated in ancient history Babylon and Tyre, the first of tile great empire cities and the Syrian kingdoms. From Diarbakir you descend the Tigris to Mosul ... The scenery is far surpassed by any ever seen by the lecturer. It banks are covered by ancient tombs and cities, and in one place where the ruins of a massive bridge, with some arches and towers, that in its time must have surpassed in strength and beauty, the bridges that span the Thames in London.
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POPSThe Children's Crusade American soldiers shot a 12-year-old boy in the streets of Mosul, Omar Musa Salih, who was standing on the roadside selling fruit juice. Eyewitnesses on the scene said the boy had not thrown the grenade -- they had seen, with their own eyes, an older man lobbing it toward the Americans -- President Obama's Pentagon insisted that the dead boy was an "insurgent" who deserved to die. Their proof? He had a handful of Iraqi dinars -- less than $9 -- in his hand when they inspected his corpse. So that means he was in the pay of terrorists, you see. This is an inevitable result of military occupations in hostile lands: all of the natives come to be seen as the enemy -- children, women, the old and weak included. All are deemed imminent and/or potential threats by the conquerors, and so, ultimately, every civilian death can be "justified" -- because there are no civilians. There are just Them -- and Us. Why are we still in Iraq?
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POPSCan *you* hear me now? Stereo head phones: Iraqi National Police Col. Moslet Ahmed fields phone calls about a possible suicide bombing during a joint search operation with U.S. troops in Mosul.
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POPSDavid Petraeus, Savior Of The Surge, Turns To Afghanistan
The achievement of this fragile success owes much to an increase in forces, Petraeus says, but above all to the application of new ideas. A graduate of Princeton University as well as West Point, Petraeus is as much an intellectual as a soldier, the hero of a new generation leading the Army. “My ideas are drawn from our historical memory,” Petraeus says. “At one time, the American army combined the art of war and that of administration” Another of Petraeus’s inspirations is the French army in Algeria. It is important, he says, not to repeat its errors: torture and attacks on the local population. But it is also important to emulate what Petraeus considers its successes: “bringing security to the people, benefiting them in concrete ways, and living among them.” Now it is up to Petraeus, after entering Iraq, to get out, under the command of Robert Gates, once Bush’s Secretary of Defense and now Obama’s. Petraeus says that the Army is glad for this continuity.
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