[Quote:]

“Iraq is far from becoming another Vietnam. But today the ghosts of the jungle are busy getting resurrected in the sands around Baghdad.” …

…Here are some of the largely ignored parallels:

1. Both wars were illegal acts of pre-emptive aggression unsanctioned by international law or world opinion. Earlier, U.S. interventions involved successive U.S. administrations. JFK’s CIA helped put Saddam in power, Reagan armed him to fight Iran. George Bush, 41 led the first Gulf War against him. Clinton tightened sanctions. George Bush, 43 invaded again. Five Administrations — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford fought in Vietnam.

2. Both wars were launched with deception. In Iraq it was the now proven phony WMD threat and contrived Saddam-Osama connection. In Vietnam, it was the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident and the elections mandated by the Geneva agreement that were canceled by Washington in l956 when the U.S. feared Ho Chi Minh would win.

3. The government lied regularly in both wars. Back then, the lies were pronounced a “credibility gap.” Today, they are considered acceptable “information warfare.” In Saigon military briefers conducted discredited “5 O’Clock Follies” press conferences. In this war, the Pentagon spoon-fed info at a Hollywood style briefing center in Doha.

4. The U.S. press was initially an enthusiastic cheerleader in both wars. When Vietnam protest grew and the war seen as a lost cause, the media frame changed. In Iraq today most of the media is trapped in hotel rooms. Only one side is covered now whereas in Vietnam, there was more reporting occasionally from the other. In Vietnam, the accent was on progress and “turned corners.” The same is true in Iraq.

5. In both wars, prisoners were abused. In South Vietnam, thousands of captives were tortured in what were the called “tiger cages.” Vietnamese POWs were often killed; In North Vietnam, some U.S. POWs were abused after bombing civilians. In Iraq, POWs on both sides were also mistreated. It was U.S. soldiers that first leaked major war crimes and abuses. In Vietnam, Ron Ridenour disclosed the My Lai Massacre. In Iraq, it was a soldier who first told investigators about the torture in Abu Ghraib prison. (Seymour Hersh the reporter who exposed My-Lai in Vietnam later exposed illegal abuses in Iraq.)

6. Illegal weapons were “deployed” in both wars. The U.S. dropped napalm, used cluster bombs against civilians and sprayed toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. Cluster bombs and updated Mark 77 napalm-like firebombs were dropped on Iraqis. Depleted uranium was added to the arsenal of prohibited weapons in Iraq.

7. Both wars claimed to be about promoting democracy. Vietnam staged elections and saw a succession of governments controlled by the U.S. come and go. Iraq has had one election so far in which most voters say they were casting ballots primarily to get the U.S. to leave. The U.S. has stage-managed Iraq’s interim government. Exiles were brought back and put in power. Vietnam’s Diem came from New Jersey, Iraq’s Allawi from Britain.

8. Both wars claimed to be about noble international goals. Vietnam was pictured as a crusade against aggressive communism and falling dominos. Iraq was sold as a front in a global war on terrorism. Neither claim proved true.

9. An imperial drive for resource control and markets helped drive both interventions. Vietnam had rubber and manganese and rare minerals. Iraq has oil. In both wars, any economic agenda was officially denied and ignored by most media outlets.

10. Both wars took place in countries with cultures we never understood or spoke the language, Both involved “insurgents” whose military prowess was underestimated and misrepresented. In Vietnam, we called the “enemy” communists; in Iraq we call them foreign terrorists. (Soldiers had their own terms, “gooks” in Vietnam, “ragheads” in Iraq) In both counties, they was in fact an indigenous resistance that enjoyed popular support. (Both targeted and brutalized people they considered collaborators with the invaders just as our own Revolution went after Americans who backed the British.) In both wars, as in all wars, innocent civilians died in droves.

[Quote:]

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list � Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings � and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

U.S. President George W. Bush grimaces after arriving at Maastricht Aachen airport in southern Netherlands, May 7, 2005

[Quote:]

In the days of Internet forums, companies have to be careful about riling their customers — those customers are likely to start chatting online, find other disgruntleds and build a crescendo of bad feeling. That seems to be what’s happening with some users of JP Instruments’ (JPI’s) engine-monitor units. JPI has encoded the data output of its monitors so it can’t be read by third-party software that owners would use to collect parameters and monitor the condition of their engines. Whether this is to protect itself liability-wise or to discourage competitors is unclear, but it has certainly made some customers unhappy. It seems the company is working on a fix, which may require a fee from users to translate the file format and perhaps leave those customers less than satisfied. Due to the changes, an upcoming article in Aviation Consumer finds that although the JPI units are still a good product, at least one rival company may prove a better choice for users who prefer non-encoded data output. For more details, check out Aviation Consumer’s June issue.

No, you don’t understand! It’s to stop the pirates or terrorists from listening to the engines!