Italy puts pressure on Bush

death of their citizen. Considering this is a war zone, they are part of the coalition forces, and a civilian was killed. We would expect to be able to investigate if this happened to an American by soldiers from another country.

Your link is from The Australian.

I think the U.S. media is afraid to do objective reporting.

The USA still has over 20 military installations in Italy ostensibly to prevent Soviet tanks from rolling into Rome. I think they are really there because being under U.S. occupation for the past 60 years appears to agree with the Italian people very well. Even though Bush has shown his disrespect for the Italian people by providing unsatisfactory answers to their questions I still do not think they will make to much of a ruckus over this.

Don

contribute to the Italian economy? I know the Navy sails to Naples because my dad was there with his ship when I was a senior in high school but I don't know how much the Navy contributes to the Naples economy since I've never been that far south in Italy.

The Italians may be correct to worry about kicking us out, if we are contributing a lot to their economy. The economy of the Philippines has suffered greatly since they kicked us out. That makes me very sad as I love the Filipinos and their country, having lived in the RP as a child when my dad was based on a drydock at Subic Bay. I wouldn't want my beloved Italians and their country to suffer that way.

It's grossly unfair that the United States has such a concentration of wealth and power that we're just allowed to say "Oops" as if it were nothing when our military personnel kill citizens of other countries which are our allies, as was the case with Nicola Calipari and many foreign reporters killed in Iraq, with Canadians killed in Afghanistan. etc.

and I just learned about Vicenza last week when I read a new Donna Leon mystery that begins with her detective character, Guido Brunetti of the Venice police, being called in early one morning after a body is discovered in one of Venice's canals. The man's body has no ID but has American coins in his pocket. At autopsy, it's quickly found that he's wearing American underwear and his dental work is American. The plot involves American personnel stationed at Vicenza who discover something nasty going on due to Italian government corruption, American corporate greed and American military/govt. going along with the corporate greed. A very good read!

The base at Vicenza, as described by Donna Leon, is very large, with fast food restaurants, etc., like a piece of America exported to Italy. It was a little strange to me, *nothing* like what we experienced living in the Philippines. She talks about food being flown in for Americans. Food flown in to Italy? :eyes:

Interesting list -- to think that we store ammo in Pisa. . .

Grazie!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/iraq-intro.htm

<snip>
As of early 2004 US occupation forces appeared to be deployed at approximately 50 locations in Iraq. An exact tally is impossible, since not all operating locations have been publicly reported, and some reported operating locations may have become inactive. The tally is also complicated by the multiplication of names that have been applied to a specific locations, and the existence of multiple place names for contiguous locations. This is particularly notable at Baghdad International Airport and the contiguous palace facilities.

The U.S. Army's top general said 28 January 2004 he is making plans based on the possibility that the Army will be required to keep tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq through 2006. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee of the United States that "for planning purposes" he has ordered his staff to consider how the Army would replace the force that is now rotating into Iraq with another force of similar size in 2005 - and again in 2006.

By late March 2004 it was apparent that the US military was systematically renaming many of the existing Camps and Forward Operating Bases as new units deployed to replace units that had served their time in Iraq. Camp Paliwoda, formerly known as FOB Eagle, was renamed in memory of Capt. Eric Paliwoda, who died 02 January 2004 when an enemy mortar round scored a direct hit on his room.

By October 2004, it was reported that the US Army, in a move to take a friendlier face, had renamed all 17 of its facilities in and around the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and given them nore noble sounding name with, as well, Arabic names to go along.

In January 2005 it was reported that the Pentagon was building a permanent military communications system in Iraq. The new Central Iraq Microwave System, is to consist of up to 12 communications towers throughout Iraq, along with fiber-optic cables connecting Camp Victory to other coalition bases in the country.


...and a great article from The Nation...

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/outrage?bid=13&pid=2132

Now comes a report in the New York Sun by Eli Lake revealing that the Pentagon is building a permanent military communications system in Iraq, a necessary foundation for any lasting troop presence. The new network will comprise twelve communications towers throughout Iraq, linking Camp Victory in Baghdad to other existing (and future) bases across the country, eventually connecting with US bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan.

"People need to get realistic and think in terms of our presence being in Iraq for a generation or until democratic stability in the region is reached," Dewey Clarridge, the CIA's former chief of Arab operations (and Iran-contra point man), told the Sun.

The fabled "exit strategy" may be not to exit. Thomas Donnelly, a defense specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said the new communication system resembles those built in West Germany and the Balkans, places where American troops remain today. "The operational advantages of US bases in Iraq should be obvious for other power-projection missions in the region," Donnelly wrote in an AEI policy paper.

Next time the Bush Administration hints at withdrawing troops, keep these grand plans in mind.

I wonder if our relationships with Iraqis will ever be as friendly as with Italians.

Even as recently as 1994, an Italian man in a small Tuscan village was telling us how much they owed to the Americans for helping them recover from Mussolini's regime. After he brought it up, I told him that my father's first cousin was an Army medic who was killed somewhere in Italy. Then he thanked me for my family's sacrifice for the Italian people. I was very surprised by this, so long after WW II. In the Fifties in the Philippines, we were always surrounded by people saying "Hey, Joe! Hey, Americano!" and flashing us the victory sign, but it had only been ten years since we liberated them from the Japanese occupation. Isn't it encouraging to know that some people can remember a favor done them forty or fifty years ago? If we all did, the world would be a better place!

except those on the take of course like Chalabi, Allawi and their ilk. Any Mid East scholar I have read says the US is doomed to occupy Iraq much as Britain was in 1920. Those bases and towers will be nothing but big old targets for the resistance and it is growing not getting weaker.

a good read about that here....

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8245212D-39CC-4E6E-80FF-2E1F29F72BC5.htm

investigation given the whitewash that was done when that Air Force jet took out the ski lift car several years ago. We didn't take responsibility then and covered for the military. What makes them think we will do any differently now.

That it is the moral Christian thing to tell the truth. Begin now.

What if they came from, say, the driver's side?

I'm willing to bet $50 Bush will say the phones were destroyed or lost, or that the phones will be returned with the circuitry fried.

Any takers?

Surely these phones will be OK.

How can it be? :shrug:

please.

http://wagnews.blogspot.com/

just like Britain was told to go shove it when they complained that we were illegally detaining and torturing British citizens. One thing you have to give Dubya, he sure knows how to treat his allies.