The News Review:

- The English Lesson
- The English Lesson
- Powell says he’s finally given up hope of getting Indian troops,…
- Dispatched to distant outposts, US forces confront the perils of an…
- Blair’s Wars by John Kampfner

The English Lesson
New York Times – Sep 28, 2003
Ten thousand United Nations troops had brought little more than ineptitude. Just before the British rushed ashore, several hundred United Nations soldiers were taken hostage by the rebels. The British declared that they would “sort out” Sierra Leone. There was arrogance in that assertion. There was self-delusion. But there has also been success, both in creating peace and starting to nation-build – accomplishments that should be recognized by any Western nation debating whether to stay away or try to address Africa’s harrowing problems. The British captain in the jungle was training a new national army, a force meant to drive the enemy toward surrender, to guarantee the security of civilians, to protect Sierra Leone’s besieged democratic president… Weeks later, 11 British soldiers were taken captive. The helicopter barrage and ground attack that freed them destroyed a predatory militia, but left 12 British wounded and one dead. The British stayed in Sierra Leone. Their resolve, and the perception that they could not be deterred, led to a gradual laying down of arms and to peaceful elections last year. In the end – with Britain’s one combat fatality – it hadn’t taken much.

The English Lesson
nytimes.com – Sep 28, 2003
(Because of Liberia’s size and receptivity, the longer project of nation-building might be easier as well. ) No, we have no urgent self-interest in Liberia, no reason to deploy those floating troops beyond what the British found sufficient: that it is the right thing to do. Once, in Sierra Leone, I listened to a man recalling the cries of people being burned alive inside a hut. ”Heeewh! Heeeewh! Heeeeewh!” was the closest he could come to evoking the sounds. Some of the cries belonged to his daughters. In Liberia, those are the kinds of sounds we could readily stop.

Powell says he’s finally given up hope of getting Indian troops,…
San Diego Union Tribune – Sep 28, 2003
"

Powell said the United States could not count anymore on a large number of international troops for deployment in Iraq. "But is there still the possibility of more troop contributors? Yes. "

India, with one of the largest standing armies in the world, has been a regular contributor to world peacekeeping – it has served in 37 out of the 56 U. peacekeeping missions, including those in Somalia, East Timor and Sierra Leone. But when the government asked Parliament this month to approve deploying Indian soldiers to Iraq, lawmakers balked, saying India would join only if troops were under a U.

Dispatched to distant outposts, US forces confront the perils of an…
U.S. News & World Report – Sep 28, 2003
"To be sure, the United States will continue to garrison forces and stockpile equipment at a handful of large, built-up "hub" bases in places such as Britain, Guam, Japan, and Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Yet a new focus will be placed on more-austere forward bases, ports, and airstrips closer to potential flash points, such as the bases in Djibouti, Kirgizstan, and Uzbekistan. Strategic planners also hope to set up in lower-cost Eastern European countries like Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania, and the Pentagon is looking into building a base of operations in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. The big question, in the words of a senior military official involved in the planning, is "what spheres of influence do we want to affect from that base?" The bases will be used as training grounds for U. forces on six-month rotations, hubs for intelligence gathering, and marshaling yards when the Pentagon needs to "surge" troops to a specific region. The new outposts come as a result of seismic shifts in American alliances during the two-year war on terrorism.

Blair’s Wars by John Kampfner
Guardian Unlimited – Sep 28, 2003
Bush and authorise the use of force in Iraq? The question becomes even more difficult to answer plausibly in light of the apparent failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the material now available from the Hutton inquiry. John Kampfner’s understated, careful and illuminating book may provide some of the answers. He takes us chronologically through Blair’s five ‘wars’, beginning with the air strikes in Iraq (1998) through the Kosovo war (1999), and then on to the dispatch of British troops to Sierra Leone (2000) and the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan (2001). But the major part of the book deals with Iraq, up to July of this year. Kampfner leads us to a set of compelling conclusions that will not inspire confidence. The story of the Iraq war describes a process of governmental decision-making that is presidential and solitary in character, apparently involving only a very small coterie of high-level political appointments and civil servants. It is a process that allows only a marginal role for the Cabinet and collective decisions, mostly rubber-stamping.