Can some one please explain to me why the United Nations or Americas International Police Force(sic) (Or international Rescue for that matter), have not gone into Zimbabwe to try to sort this mess out? Could it be cos there is no oil?

After all, and this may shock some of you, but word on the street is, and be warned, you may need a seat after reading this.....

Southern African election observers say Zimbabwe's presidential poll did not reflect the will of the country's people.

You answered your own question. Intervention in Yugoslavia and Iraq were not altruistic actions. We war for profit. When the old ratbag Mandella dies, watch for new moves by the black socialists running that benighted country.

Yes, oil.

The US went into Iraq initially on the [highly specious and spurious, lies in other words] grounds of WMD - before that [without warning] suddenly became 'regime change', one week after Baghdad had been taken.

Alas, any pretence as to wanting real regime change where 'dictators and despots run the play' has been ignored in Tehran, North Korea and Zimbabwe, amongst other despot-run nations.

So oil and there being no US national interest in these other places.

It might be different if Zimbabwe had nukes - as the US has just done a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuke facilities (actually be blown up in the last few days).

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

Lassen,

If by 'sorting it out' you mean military action, then I guess the easy answer is that it would be very difficult to accomplish. Kosovo and East Timor presented relatively straightforward military options, whereas Zimbabwe would be a nightmare to invade. Not saying it's impossible, but it would surely take just about every resource the British Armed Forces have.

I don't entirely subscribe to the war-for-profit logic. Firstly, if anyone except the local Black Marketeers made any profit out of Yugoslavia, I'd be interested to know about it. As P.J. O'Rourke wrote, "Even if you win, you only win Yugoslavia. It's not like you're invading France!" Secondly, politicians (Blair was a good example) can be pretty quick with the gunboat if they think there's quick and easy kudos out of military intervention. Sierra Leone and Kosovo are good examples here.

Forty plus years ago, Harold Wilson dismissed the idea of sending British troops to reign in the break way colony of what was then Rhodesia. At the time a big thing was made about not wanting to send British squaddies to fight kith and kin (they'd obviously never seen a garrison town on a Saturday night then!), but I'm convinced that had it been a more easily achievable option he would have used it as a threat against Ian Smith.

On a different note, I'm not entirely convinced we should feel obliged to do something. After all, they wanted independence from us, they got it and now they have to live with it. Why should we have to bail them out? All these independent African nations are so insistent that they can solve their own problems without our intervention, well why not let them get on with it?

Jack

U.S. escalating covert operations against Iran

Reuters - Sunday, June 29 05:25 amNEW YORK (Reuters) -

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.


The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine's July 7 and 14 issue, centres around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."

Hersh has written previously about possible administration plans to go to war to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including an April 2006 article in the New Yorker that suggested regime change in Iran, whether by diplomatic or military means, was Bush's ultimate goal.

Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million (200 million pounds), was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.

These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in Bush's war on terrorism, who may be captured or killed, according to the article.

But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the article said, citing current and former officials.

Many of these activities are not specified in the new finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature, it said.

Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.

The article said U.S. support for the dissident groups could prompt a violent crackdown by Iran, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene.

None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.

The United States is leading international efforts to rein in Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, although Washington concedes Iran has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian uses.

It just seems so wrong, well to me anyway, that the worl can sit back and let this.

The people of Zimbabwe need someone to help them out a bit. Granted, the UN would be stretched, as they are where ever they go. But at what point does the world say enough is enough. When he has killed 10 or 20 people or even 10 or 20 thousand. Or a million maybe. I agree it would be a battle very hard, if at all, possible to win.

You can bet you life if this wa happening in Europe the worlds responce would be different.

Empires huh, who needs em?

Nothing short of the Z reserve Aka 1950


Stop-loss policy

Stop-loss, in the United States military, is the involuntary extension of a service member's active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service (ETS) date. It also applies to the cessation of a permanent change of station (PCS) move for a member still in military service. Stop-loss was used immediately before and during the first Persian Gulf War. Since then, it has been used during American military deployments to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent War on Terror.

The policy has been legally challenged several times, however federal courts have consistently found that military service members contractually agree that their term of service may be involuntarily extended.


Legal basis

Stop-loss was created by the United States Congress after the Vietnam War.[citation needed] Its use is founded on Title 10, United States Code, Section 12305(a) which states in part: "... the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States" and Paragraph 9(c) of DD Form 4/1 (The Armed Forces Enlistment Contract) which states: "In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless the enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States."

Every person who enlists in a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces signs an initial contract with an eight (8) year service obligation. The enlistment contract for a person going on active duty generally stipulates an initial period of active duty from 2 to 4 years, followed by service in a reserve component of the Armed Forces of the United States for the remainder of the eight year obligation.[1] Service members whose ETS, retirement, or end of service obligation date falls during a deployment are generally involuntarily extended until the end of their unit's deployment.


Controversy
The controversy regarding stop-loss focuses mainly on the aspect involving "involuntary extension" of a service member's initial active duty service obligation. For service members opposed to involuntary extension, it represents implementation of a desultory clause in their contract which alters their expectation of an end of term of service date. It also exposes them to the risk of an additional or prolonged combat deployment. For opponents of a current armed conflict, the public perception of "involuntary extension" is contrary to the notion of voluntary service and undermines popular support for the conflict.

In a campaign speech in 2004, former presidential candidate John Kerry described stop-loss as a "backdoor draft."[2] The use of stop-loss has been criticized by activists and some politicians as an abuse of the spirit of the law, on the basis that Congress has not declared war, such as is the case in the Iraq War.

During August 2007, Iraq Veterans Against the War, an activist organization of former and current service members, announced a national "Stop the Stop-Loss" campaign at a press conference where they were holding a week-long vigil in a tower erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Other anti-Stop-Loss vigils have occurred in Bellingham, Washington, and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

On March 10 and 11, 2008, a group of college students, supported by Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War, as well as several other organizations, issued symbolic stop-loss "orders" to every member of both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate in protest of both the practice of stop-lossing and of the Iraq War. On March 12, 2008, the students "enforced" the orders by blocking off the exits to the parking garages of the Rayburn House Office Building and the Hart Senate Office Building.[3]

Legal challenges
The first known legal challenge in American history to the involuntary extension of a soldier's enlistment contract occurred during the American Civil War, when Private Edward A. Stevens filed suit against the federal government for extending his three-month enlistment. The prosecuting party for the government was Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War. [4] Stevens lost the suit and was confined for "mutinous conduct" for a brief period of time.

The first legal challenge to the contemporary stop-loss policy came in August 2004, with a lawsuit challenged by David Qualls, a National Guardsman in California.[5] Qualls argued the military breached his enlistment contract by involuntarily extending his term of service. However, his arguments were rejected by Judge Royce C. Lambert and the case was dismissed.[6] Qualls' case was not appealed.

In October 2004, a "John Doe" lawsuit was filed by an anonymous National Guardsman facing stop-loss, challenging the validity of the law that authorized it. This suit was dismissed at trial by Judge Frank C. Damrell and the court's findings were upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. [7] The Ninth Circuit also rejected another similar appeal in Santiago v. Rumsfeld in May, 2005. [8]


Government response
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as one of his first acts in his position, penned a memo compelling commanders to "minimize" the stop-lossing of soldiers.

The United States Army states that enlisted soldiers facing stop-loss can now voluntarily separate by request, under provision 3-12, but only after they complete an involuntary deployment of twelve to fifteen months and 90 days stabilization time (time allowed to "out-process" from the military) can they apply.

This refers to an Army policy dated Sept. 5, 2002. It allowed enlisted soldiers under stop-loss to voluntarily separate on the one-year anniversary of their original expiration of service or ETS date (under twelve-month stop-loss); officers and warrant officers, not retirement eligible, to apply to leave one year from the end of their original service obligation date; officers and warrant officers without a service obligation to request separation 12 months after they were first affected by stop-loss; and retirement-eligible soldiers to apply for retirement one year from their original retirement eligibility date (defined as 20 years active federal service) or one year from when stop-loss took effect if the soldier was retirement eligible on the effective date of stop-loss.

Despite Secretary Gates's order, by April 2008 use of stop loss had increased by 43%.[9] Soldiers affected by stop loss were then serving, on average, an extra 6.6 months, and sergeants through sergeants first class made up 45% of these soldiers. From 2002 through April 2008, 58,300 soldiers were affected by stop loss, or about 1% of active duty, Reserve, and National Guard troops.

With respect to some of your points, Jack, you actually raise salient issues.

Wilson was inept [and paranoid] on almost every level: it was under him that the UK faced, two world wars notwithstanding, true bankruptcy, with Dennis Healey, as Chancellor, having to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bail-out. He, Healey, also made a bigger balls of things when Minister of Defence - Op's Claret aside.

Wilson refused to send troops or anything like enough aid to Biafra - and History tells us that that wee chimps' tea party was 'resolved' by 'Mad Mike' Hoare and his 5 Commando mercenaries. Biafra didn't stand a chance as a result and the resultant butchery was epoch-redefining in its savagery.

Under Labour again, this time Wilson's successor, Jim Callaghan, we all but signalled to Argentina that we didn't give a fuck about the Falklands by with-drawing HMS Endurance on their watch. We all know what happened next.

Having been in-country yourself, you'll appreciate that there is, logistics aside, no substitute to boots on the ground - 'P' for plenty of.

Be honest, a mere handful of (not even 8 thousand) Toms on the ground in Afghanistan? If we put 50,000 in there (with all the necessary Gucci wrap-around logistics to go with such a deployment), we'd actually stand a chance of making a difference and perhaps get things to a stage where we wouldn't face the probability of facing an open-ended commitment there, before finally, ultimately, yet another ignominious 'strategic withdrawal' having only achieved piecemeal goals...and having failed in our primary objective of 'securing peace' for the country and a complete rout of the enemy.

Iraq I'd leave tomorrow; Afghanistan has valid reasons for us to be there. But not if we're just going to 'play at it'.

With the Met Police now being larger than the Royal Navy, and endemic shortages of essential kit for use in-country (and piss-poor housing and support structures for the families left at home, on base), and the Afghan enemy forces' mantra "You English have all the watches, we have the time..." ringing in out ears, we at least need to do ONE job correctly; not spread ourselves so thin that we will only ever be a sticking plaster's resolution to a problem requiring surgery. At the moment, we're just 'jobbing soldiers' trying desperately to ram all ten fingers into a leaking dam with a million holes - it's not good policy and it's not good soldiering (in terms of moral, not capability!)

In my 42 years on the planet, I have, in the past, had good reason to question the sincerity, sense, acuity and aptitude of many a UK politician. But I have never had due cause to question an entire gov't's capabilities and it's apparently deliberate contempt and disdain for those holding the line at the sharp end. This bloody Labour gov't has been an unmitigated disgrace from start to finish, and is certainly no friend to the guys in the forces. From the national disgrace of having only a part time Minister of Defence, Dezzy Brown, to expecting us to meet Commonwealth, NATO and UN duties whilst being expected to fight two wars on a peacetime budget. At least all John Prescott had was two Jag's: Brown has the temerity to take two jobs - when there's lads on the line in harm's way. Superlatives for just how betrayed Toms must feel about that must truly fail them. And it's not just today's squaddie who's getting negative messages either: think about all the just-about-to-leave-school lads who were looking to take the shilling as a career? They see what's going on and think 'fuck that!' So where are the next wave of battalions gonna come from with recruitment being hit?

If you sat down and tried to write a script for fuck-up and failure, you could not have done anything like enough justice to how this Labour Gov't has gone into bat. The words 'Criminally Negligent' writ large.

The general election can not come soon enough. Alas, too late for the poor lads already lost to us.

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

Tommy,

You've brought up many points and I'm not sure that I can answer them all. Keeping to Lassen's original question, 'Why can't we do something about Zimbabwe?', I think it's commonly acknowledged that if 'We' = the UK then the 'do something' can't realistically equate to any real military intervention. Let's face it we'd be hard pressed to even mount an airlift evacuation.

Arms embargoes are useless due to the rigid opposition of China, Russia and South Africa. Economic embargoes may hasten regime change, but apart from severely effecting the people we want to help, it raises the prospect of having to what kind of country is going to be left to rebuild and the cost of doing so.

Even if a multi-national/UN/Pan-African/Team America (Fuck Yeah!)/EUFOR/whatever was put together and a green light for military intervention was given, I'd still breathe a word of caution. Some situations just need soldiers to sort things out, and I class Afghanistan in that description and would say that Darfur too requires a foreign military presence. Other missions are better resolved by alternate means. Before we all start banging the war drum we might want to remember a conversation between Gerry Fitt and then Home Secretary Jim Callaghan who was responsible for the decision to deploy troops to the province.


Gerry Fitt was surrounded by a small crowd of Catholics as he later recalled:

'pulling my coat, screaming and shouting, that they were going to be murdered in their beds and begging, begging me to get the army in.
I quietened them all down and said, "Look, before I lift the telephone and ring Jim Callaghan, what do you want me to say? You're all asking me to get the army in?" And they all said yes. So I picked up the phone and rang him. I said, "I'm pleading with you Jim. Send in the army." And I'll never forget his reply.

"Gerry," he says, "I can get the army in but it's going to be a devil of a job to get it out."'

Tommy,

Sorry mate, signed off before I intended! Just wanted to add as a post script that Mike Hoare's '5 Commando' fought in the Simba rebellion in the Congo in the mid 1960's and he had earlier fought with his then '4 Commando' during the Katanga uprising also in the Congo. To the best of my knowledge he never was involved in the Biafran War.

Jack

Hi Jack,

Apropos Mike Hoare and 5 Commando in Biafra - sorry mate, you're right, it wasn't him or 5 Commando, it was Rolf Steiner, Taffy Williams, Marc Goosens et al. The entire enterprise backed by the Swedish idealist, Count Carl Gustaf Von Rosen, who's tiny and hastily assembled 'air force' nearly turned the tide for Biafra.

My original point being, as above, that it was Wilson's abject failure to get involved or do the right thing, which allowed another mercenary mess to unfold; with the requisite butchery which goes with it. PoWs on both sides being shot out of hand etc.

EDIT: And I'm not suggesting the UK put troops on the ground in Zimbabwe either. We can't muster enough men to guard Buck House at the moment, let alone deploy on a third front and still meet all our NATO, Armilla Patrol and baby-sit the French responsibilities and commitments.

As for the UN: if ever there was a body so ill-equipped or able for the role faced here (i.e. military intervention), then it is the UN. The standard of troops it produces are invariably drawn from the poorest, ill-trained and ill-disciplined rabbles ever assembled. They wade in on alleged 'peace keeping' missions when, in truth, there is no peace to keep, and they do no have, nor are they ever likely to be given, 'peace enforcement' ROE. In short, they're a joke.

If you want a working example of one of the last times the UN tried a job in Africa (Sierra Leone, Mogadishu, Rwanda, Liberia etc. ad nauseam aside), then do you remember Conor Cruise O'Brien's wee trip down to the Congo? Irish 'peace-keeping' troops (in UN garb) failed dismally to control Katanga's mercenary hordes.

The problem we face in Africa is that over 50% of the states therein are run by non-elected cabals, juntas and despots, so when when faced with the requirement of 'disciplining' Mugabe, they never do damned thing as they do not want the spotlight of international scrutiny pointed at them in turn.

And that tin-pot drunk, Thabo Mbeke, will never do what's required as he and the rest of the ANC former terrorist leadership was given safe haven in Harare under the Apartheid regime; so it's an old boys club and you can rest assured that Mugabe never lets Mbeke forget the 'favour' he owes him for offering sanctuary in days of yore.
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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

In answer to Lassen's understandable frustration about the Mugabe situation, I would posit the following.

Had Robert Mugabe been a white politician he would surely have been removed from power years ago.

Can you imagine the international community standing by while a colonial ruler reduced an African country to grinding poverty, at the same time murdering, torturing and starving its citizens into submission on the scale that Mugabe has, simply because they refused to vote for him?

How can this be acceptable to the political leaders of South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania or the United Nations? And yet, for the entire 21st century the perpetrator of the continent's worst human rights abuses since the heyday of Idi Amin, 'Emperor' Jean-Bédel Bokassa and Charles Taylor appears to have attracted only muted censure.

Indeed he was the recipient of standing ovations at recent African Union conferences and earlier this year he and his ghastly wife were able to travel to Rome - with an entourage of bodyguards and chefs - to join, of all things, a UN debate on the global food crisis.

The old, post 'independence' 1980 election mantra of 'White man bad, black man good' needs to be updated, as it's an open secret that Mugabe had had his charismatic guerilla leader, Josiah Tongogara, bumped off in a road accident and that he was already preparing to wipe out his rival Matabeles in a genocide that may in the end have killed 20,000 people. And he also tried (twice) to have Joshua Nkomo topped.

These atrocities put Mugabe squarely under the purview of the International Criminal Court at the Hague (to where we've just shipped Liberia's former dictator, Charles Taylor for similar pastimes).

The sooner the bloody better.

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

A Glimpse Inside Mugabe's World


Unbelievable some of the lines coming out of his mouth in this interview: "The British spoilt things for the whites..."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7470959.stm

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

And you want to know why China vetoed the UN resolution against Zimbabwe this weekend?

It's busy supplying all the toe-rag nations in Africa with weapons and other logistics.

"China 'is fuelling war in Darfur'"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1521085/Chinese-arms-exports-%27fuelling-civil-wars%27.html

Edit: Correct URL input.

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

Less than 50% of African 'leaders' are elected, and even when they are, they rarely run democracies as a result.


"African leaders revel in largesse while people live in poverty"


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/2303326/African-leaders-revel-in-largesse-while-people-live-in-poverty.html


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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

"Why has China bought Mugabe a Mansion?"


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=A1YourView&xml=/opinion/2008/07/20/do2007.xml

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

Zimbabwe will introduce new higher-value notes for 100 Billion Zimbabwe Dollars today as part of its desperate fight to keep up with hyperinflation, the central bank said.

This would be worthy of parody if it wasn't so tragic for the poor sods living there.

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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

One HUNDRED BILLION dollars - for three eggs?!



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"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes..."

Still cheaper than fuel up here.