Marines in Liberia Pt. II
- Thread starter DonQatU
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John G
Member
Link please?
Tamara
Senior Member
Maybe your sources are better than Navy Joe's? (Of course, working in Norfolk, what would he know?)
Out of curiousity, do you see something wrong with Marines being deployed to evacuate U.S. Embassy personnel or citizens in a foreign country in the throes of civil war or as part of a coalition force along with French and Nigerian troops? (Not that it's likely to happen with the Kearsarge already well away from Liberia...)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=LHD-3&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=marines+liberia
Here's a quarter, DonQatU...
We made a special dispensation from the usual civil rights requirements of L&P for the war in Iraq. This has zero to do with that. This thread had better develop a civil rights/Legal & Political angle riki tik...
Out of curiousity, do you see something wrong with Marines being deployed to evacuate U.S. Embassy personnel or citizens in a foreign country in the throes of civil war or as part of a coalition force along with French and Nigerian troops? (Not that it's likely to happen with the Kearsarge already well away from Liberia...)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=LHD-3&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=marines+liberia
Here's a quarter, DonQatU...
We made a special dispensation from the usual civil rights requirements of L&P for the war in Iraq. This has zero to do with that. This thread had better develop a civil rights/Legal & Political angle riki tik...
Tamara
Senior Member
If you're talking about LHD-3, it was "un-diverted".
If you're talking about anything else, it'll be part of a multinational force that was not summoned by the Trilateral Commission.
This still hasn't been tied into civil rights/L&P. Do so now.
If you're talking about anything else, it'll be part of a multinational force that was not summoned by the Trilateral Commission.
This still hasn't been tied into civil rights/L&P. Do so now.
Liberia Reports Up to 300 Civilian Deaths
Thu Jun 26, 8:02 PM ET
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH, Associated Press Writer
MONROVIA, Liberia - Angry crowds laid the bloody, maimed bodies of children in front of Liberia's heavily guarded U.S. Embassy on Thursday, shouting blame at U.S. Marines and America for failing to protect Monrovia's people from fighting overrunning the capital.
President Bush (news - web sites) joined international leaders calling for Liberia's president, indicted war crimes suspect Charles Taylor, to cede power as promised in a shattered June 17 cease-fire "so that his country can be spared further bloodshed."
Bush gave no hint he intended to offer U.S. military assistance, as some outsiders have urged for Liberia, a nation founded by freed 19th-century American slaves that sees itself as having special ties to the United States.
A fresh rocket attack Thursday in the center of the refugee-crowded capital killed a street-corner moneychanger and struck new panic in the city. Three days of rocket and mortar fire have killed at least 200 civilians and left moaning, bleeding wounded overflowing onto the dirt grounds of Monrovia's main hospital.
Still unable to advance past Monrovia's strategic port into the heart of the city, Liberia's rebels pledged Thursday to keep fighting until the capital was theirs and Taylor gone.
"Our forces are still in Monrovia, and Taylor is trying to run," rebel defense official Joe Wylie told The Associated Press in Dakar, Senegal.
"Our plan is to take the whole country," he said, a task that "could be days."
As night fell Thursday, two hours of heavy bombardment around the port shook the city.
In Ghana, West Africa's mediators set a 10 a.m. Friday deadline for all sides to restore their cease-fire, or see Liberia's internationally brokered peace talks formally end.
Liberia's response late Thursday to Bush's message was studiedly restrained, urging the United States to "remain proactive in the peace process," and making no mention of the U.S. leader's call for Taylor to leave.
Rebels have fought a three-year battle to oust Taylor, a Boston-educated, Libyan-trained ex-warlord who has made an array of enemies in 14 years of fueling West Africa's conflicts.
Taylor is accused in long-standing U.N. sanctions of gun- and diamond-running with West African rebel movements. A U.N.-backed indictment disclosed June 4 accused Taylor of crimes against humanity in his backing of rebels in Sierra Leone, who killed tens of thousands and maimed thousands more with machetes in a 10-year campaign to win that country's diamond fields.
Liberia's rebels have made their first pushes into the capital this month. Each drive has been push-and-shove, with Taylor's forces so far succeeding each time in driving the AK-47-toting rebels back.
However, fighting already has realized the worst fears for the city of 1 million, now crowded with hundreds of thousands of refugees: rebels lobbing rocket barrages into neighborhoods filled with terrified civilians, and Taylor's forces looting stores and robbing those fleeing the carnage.
On Thursday, bitter families placed the bodies of seven of the dead — four children, two women and a man — in front of the U.S. Embassy, beneath the eyes and guns of Marines standing sentinel behind sandbag bunkers on the roof. The bodies, contorted and some missing limbs, were piled in a heap.
Witnesses said searchers pulled 18 corpses from an evacuated U.S. diplomatic residential compound. It had been filled with thousands of desperate Liberian families, seeking sanctuary, when at least three rockets slammed into the crowd Wednesday.
Wounded overwhelmed Monrovia's John F. Kennedy hospital.
Medical workers placed 400 wounded from Wednesday's shelling on floors and hallways, then laid Thursday's bloody newcomers out in the hospital's yard.
Health Minister Peter Coleman said fighting Tuesday and Wednesday had killed 200 to 300 civilians and wounded 1,000.
"Come to work — our people are dying, they need you," the health minister said, appealing over the radio for frightened doctors and nurses to report to duty.
Morgue workers reported mortuaries filled with "hundreds" of dead. Soldiers commandeered vehicles from civilians to cart the dead off shrapnel-strewn streets.
Defense Minister Daniel Chea, touring the devastated city, claimed government forces had pushed rebels back to the northwest edge.
In neighboring Sierra Leone, U.N. helicopters and crews were on standby, ready to fly to Monrovia on "very short notice" to evacuate international workers, U.N. spokesman Patrick Coker said.
While the June 17 cease-fire was the first in Liberia's current 3-year-old rebellion, Taylor and his rivals repeatedly made and broke pacts in the 1989-96 civil war that saw Monrovia overrun time and again by fighting, killing tens of thousands.
Rebels include ex-combatants from that civil war. Neighboring Guinea is alleged to be backing the older, eastern-based rebel group, in a bid to protect its own borders from armed incursions by Taylor's fighters.
A second rebel movement, better-disciplined and better-armed, emerged in the east this year.
That band allegedly is backed by neighboring Ivory Coast, angry at the entry of notoriously vicious Liberian fighters into Ivory Coast's own 10-month-old civil war, now brought to a cease-fire with the aid of troops of colonial ruler, France.
Taylor was elected Liberia's president in 1997, in part out of fears he would renew fighting if he lost. A declaration by Taylor at the June 4 open of the peace talks, and again in the cease-fire signed by his government, were seen as committing Taylor to yielding power in the interest of peace.
Fighting broke out again over the weekend, after Taylor said his "large following" would not allow him to yield power so easily. Taylor said he would stay through the January end of his term, and even then accept only his vice president as successor.
With the time stamp on the article if the Marines are there they are invisible. Listening to your own voice is generally bad for good info.
Thu Jun 26, 8:02 PM ET
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH, Associated Press Writer
MONROVIA, Liberia - Angry crowds laid the bloody, maimed bodies of children in front of Liberia's heavily guarded U.S. Embassy on Thursday, shouting blame at U.S. Marines and America for failing to protect Monrovia's people from fighting overrunning the capital.
President Bush (news - web sites) joined international leaders calling for Liberia's president, indicted war crimes suspect Charles Taylor, to cede power as promised in a shattered June 17 cease-fire "so that his country can be spared further bloodshed."
Bush gave no hint he intended to offer U.S. military assistance, as some outsiders have urged for Liberia, a nation founded by freed 19th-century American slaves that sees itself as having special ties to the United States.
A fresh rocket attack Thursday in the center of the refugee-crowded capital killed a street-corner moneychanger and struck new panic in the city. Three days of rocket and mortar fire have killed at least 200 civilians and left moaning, bleeding wounded overflowing onto the dirt grounds of Monrovia's main hospital.
Still unable to advance past Monrovia's strategic port into the heart of the city, Liberia's rebels pledged Thursday to keep fighting until the capital was theirs and Taylor gone.
"Our forces are still in Monrovia, and Taylor is trying to run," rebel defense official Joe Wylie told The Associated Press in Dakar, Senegal.
"Our plan is to take the whole country," he said, a task that "could be days."
As night fell Thursday, two hours of heavy bombardment around the port shook the city.
In Ghana, West Africa's mediators set a 10 a.m. Friday deadline for all sides to restore their cease-fire, or see Liberia's internationally brokered peace talks formally end.
Liberia's response late Thursday to Bush's message was studiedly restrained, urging the United States to "remain proactive in the peace process," and making no mention of the U.S. leader's call for Taylor to leave.
Rebels have fought a three-year battle to oust Taylor, a Boston-educated, Libyan-trained ex-warlord who has made an array of enemies in 14 years of fueling West Africa's conflicts.
Taylor is accused in long-standing U.N. sanctions of gun- and diamond-running with West African rebel movements. A U.N.-backed indictment disclosed June 4 accused Taylor of crimes against humanity in his backing of rebels in Sierra Leone, who killed tens of thousands and maimed thousands more with machetes in a 10-year campaign to win that country's diamond fields.
Liberia's rebels have made their first pushes into the capital this month. Each drive has been push-and-shove, with Taylor's forces so far succeeding each time in driving the AK-47-toting rebels back.
However, fighting already has realized the worst fears for the city of 1 million, now crowded with hundreds of thousands of refugees: rebels lobbing rocket barrages into neighborhoods filled with terrified civilians, and Taylor's forces looting stores and robbing those fleeing the carnage.
On Thursday, bitter families placed the bodies of seven of the dead — four children, two women and a man — in front of the U.S. Embassy, beneath the eyes and guns of Marines standing sentinel behind sandbag bunkers on the roof. The bodies, contorted and some missing limbs, were piled in a heap.
Witnesses said searchers pulled 18 corpses from an evacuated U.S. diplomatic residential compound. It had been filled with thousands of desperate Liberian families, seeking sanctuary, when at least three rockets slammed into the crowd Wednesday.
Wounded overwhelmed Monrovia's John F. Kennedy hospital.
Medical workers placed 400 wounded from Wednesday's shelling on floors and hallways, then laid Thursday's bloody newcomers out in the hospital's yard.
Health Minister Peter Coleman said fighting Tuesday and Wednesday had killed 200 to 300 civilians and wounded 1,000.
"Come to work — our people are dying, they need you," the health minister said, appealing over the radio for frightened doctors and nurses to report to duty.
Morgue workers reported mortuaries filled with "hundreds" of dead. Soldiers commandeered vehicles from civilians to cart the dead off shrapnel-strewn streets.
Defense Minister Daniel Chea, touring the devastated city, claimed government forces had pushed rebels back to the northwest edge.
In neighboring Sierra Leone, U.N. helicopters and crews were on standby, ready to fly to Monrovia on "very short notice" to evacuate international workers, U.N. spokesman Patrick Coker said.
While the June 17 cease-fire was the first in Liberia's current 3-year-old rebellion, Taylor and his rivals repeatedly made and broke pacts in the 1989-96 civil war that saw Monrovia overrun time and again by fighting, killing tens of thousands.
Rebels include ex-combatants from that civil war. Neighboring Guinea is alleged to be backing the older, eastern-based rebel group, in a bid to protect its own borders from armed incursions by Taylor's fighters.
A second rebel movement, better-disciplined and better-armed, emerged in the east this year.
That band allegedly is backed by neighboring Ivory Coast, angry at the entry of notoriously vicious Liberian fighters into Ivory Coast's own 10-month-old civil war, now brought to a cease-fire with the aid of troops of colonial ruler, France.
Taylor was elected Liberia's president in 1997, in part out of fears he would renew fighting if he lost. A declaration by Taylor at the June 4 open of the peace talks, and again in the cease-fire signed by his government, were seen as committing Taylor to yielding power in the interest of peace.
Fighting broke out again over the weekend, after Taylor said his "large following" would not allow him to yield power so easily. Taylor said he would stay through the January end of his term, and even then accept only his vice president as successor.
With the time stamp on the article if the Marines are there they are invisible. Listening to your own voice is generally bad for good info.
Preacherman
Member
From the Telegraph, London (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...er27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/27/ixworld.html):
Bush threatens to pacify Liberia
By Tim Butcher, Africa Correspondent
(Filed: 27/06/2003)
An American military operation to restore order in Liberia looked likely last night as President George W Bush called for peace in the war-torn West African republic.
He drew cheers and applause from an audience of businessmen, academics and African leaders when he called on Liberia's President Charles Taylor, an indicted war criminal, to stand down.
"President Taylor needs to step down so that his country can be spared further bloodshed," he said.
Earlier, British diplomats raised the possibility of an American military operation with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's UN ambassador, saying that America would be the "natural candidate" for any Western-run operation in Liberia.
Mr Bush called for all sides in Liberia's bloody civil war to return to the negotiating table and to end a series of clashes that have cost thousands of civilian lives, including 300 in the capital, Monrovia, this week.
He spoke as the Liberian government claimed it had driven the rebels from the port area, a few miles from the heart of the capital, that they had occupied on Wednesday.
With a US Navy amphibious assault ship, the USS Kearsarge, just off the Liberian coast carrying 1,200 marines, Mr Bush has the option of ordering a significant deployment to one of Africa's most chaotic countries.
Liberia has close historic and traditional links with America. It was founded in the early 19th century as Africa's first republic by freed slaves from the United States.
For an intervention force, Sir Jeremy said, the United States is "the nation that everyone would think would be the natural candidate".
"I think that outside help of that kind at the present juncture, or ready to move when there is an agreement to stop fighting, an agreement that would need to be policed and observed, would look very constructive," he said.
"If there were a lead nation that was prepared to take action in Liberia, then I think that would be very broadly welcomed internationally. But we are not there yet."
It is unlikely that Sir Jeremy would have floated the idea of a US-led force without first having at least tacit approval from the Bush administration.
If America does send troops to Liberia, it will create a diplomatic symmetry in West Africa, matching Britain's deployment to Sierra Leone dating from 2000 and France's Ivory Coast operation since last year.
For the civilian population of Liberia, living in wretched conditions as one of Africa's poorest countries is again riven by heavy fighting, any peacekeeping deployment could not come fast enough.
Last week almost every civilian spoken to in a straw poll in Monrovia begged for military assistance from America to help break the cycle of violence. "We need the Americans to help us. They must come, it is our only hope," said Fatima Harrison, an elderly lady in an overcrowded slum in the centre of Monrovia.
Hopes were raised when the Kearsarge appeared on the horizon off Monrovia but its helicopters flew nothing but food and supplies into the US embassy on the city's Mamba Point promontory.
It echoed the 1990 deployment of US shipborne troops to Monrovia in a rescue operation for US passport holders that fell some way short of a full peacekeeping mission.
Civilians have routinely born the brunt of more than a decade of fighting in Liberia with rival militias killing civilians, raping women and looting property whenever fierce clashes occur.
Bush threatens to pacify Liberia
By Tim Butcher, Africa Correspondent
(Filed: 27/06/2003)
An American military operation to restore order in Liberia looked likely last night as President George W Bush called for peace in the war-torn West African republic.
He drew cheers and applause from an audience of businessmen, academics and African leaders when he called on Liberia's President Charles Taylor, an indicted war criminal, to stand down.
"President Taylor needs to step down so that his country can be spared further bloodshed," he said.
Earlier, British diplomats raised the possibility of an American military operation with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's UN ambassador, saying that America would be the "natural candidate" for any Western-run operation in Liberia.
Mr Bush called for all sides in Liberia's bloody civil war to return to the negotiating table and to end a series of clashes that have cost thousands of civilian lives, including 300 in the capital, Monrovia, this week.
He spoke as the Liberian government claimed it had driven the rebels from the port area, a few miles from the heart of the capital, that they had occupied on Wednesday.
With a US Navy amphibious assault ship, the USS Kearsarge, just off the Liberian coast carrying 1,200 marines, Mr Bush has the option of ordering a significant deployment to one of Africa's most chaotic countries.
Liberia has close historic and traditional links with America. It was founded in the early 19th century as Africa's first republic by freed slaves from the United States.
For an intervention force, Sir Jeremy said, the United States is "the nation that everyone would think would be the natural candidate".
"I think that outside help of that kind at the present juncture, or ready to move when there is an agreement to stop fighting, an agreement that would need to be policed and observed, would look very constructive," he said.
"If there were a lead nation that was prepared to take action in Liberia, then I think that would be very broadly welcomed internationally. But we are not there yet."
It is unlikely that Sir Jeremy would have floated the idea of a US-led force without first having at least tacit approval from the Bush administration.
If America does send troops to Liberia, it will create a diplomatic symmetry in West Africa, matching Britain's deployment to Sierra Leone dating from 2000 and France's Ivory Coast operation since last year.
For the civilian population of Liberia, living in wretched conditions as one of Africa's poorest countries is again riven by heavy fighting, any peacekeeping deployment could not come fast enough.
Last week almost every civilian spoken to in a straw poll in Monrovia begged for military assistance from America to help break the cycle of violence. "We need the Americans to help us. They must come, it is our only hope," said Fatima Harrison, an elderly lady in an overcrowded slum in the centre of Monrovia.
Hopes were raised when the Kearsarge appeared on the horizon off Monrovia but its helicopters flew nothing but food and supplies into the US embassy on the city's Mamba Point promontory.
It echoed the 1990 deployment of US shipborne troops to Monrovia in a rescue operation for US passport holders that fell some way short of a full peacekeeping mission.
Civilians have routinely born the brunt of more than a decade of fighting in Liberia with rival militias killing civilians, raping women and looting property whenever fierce clashes occur.
John G
Member
"Watch the news?"
Sorry, Don. I've been working a lot this week, and haven't turned on the TV or had time to check my ususal news sites. I figured you'd have a link to the story, my bad. I only asked you to post a link to a topic you brought up, but okay, I suppose.
(edit: thanks to those who posted links/text of articles)
Sorry, Don. I've been working a lot this week, and haven't turned on the TV or had time to check my ususal news sites. I figured you'd have a link to the story, my bad. I only asked you to post a link to a topic you brought up, but okay, I suppose.
(edit: thanks to those who posted links/text of articles)
Preacherman, not sure if the number of personnel on board the USS Kearsarge were accurate in the article you quoted. But your article DID establish the fact that Marines from the 2nd Expeditionary Brigade were detoured from Iraq and are sitting off shore of Liberia waiting to see if they'll be used as "peacekeepers".
I can tell you this. The 2nd Expeditionary Brigade won't arrive at Onslow Beach, NC tomorrow as scheduled.
Don
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