Photos of Mosul 2017

At 15 second it shows them firing on ISIS: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/dave-eubanks-free-burma-rangers...

As far as the OP photos go, this one here shows them as a well armed militia: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/07/J9bqC3X.jpg

In Burma they fought for sure:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/myanmars-free-burma-rangers-are...

https://www.outsideonline.com/1910476/jesus-kissed-war-fring...

James Fallows was one of the better known journalists and he got a lot of attention:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/10/proceed... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/11/the-fif...

There's a LONG list of people referenced here, including a number of military, intelligence, and foreign policy experts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War#Opp...

A key part to understanding this is remembering that blaming it on intelligence failures was the defense which the George W. Bush administration settled on to replace their earlier failed excuses. Before the invasion started, the intelligence claims used to justify it had fallen apart and the U.K. & U.S. Senate reports noted that significant pressure was placed by the White House on the intelligence agencies to justify what they were already planning to do.

(The former Treasury Secretary noted that is was planned starting before 9/11: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/)

The Downing Street memo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo) had a similar conclusion, quoting the Foreign Minister:

> Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy

The pattern through all of this was the White House choosing to ignore, override, or replace professional civil servants with political appointees who would produce the desired results. When the CIA and other analysts would not support those claims, Donald Rumsfeld setup a sham intelligence unit which did produce the claims they later used (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans).

This happened with the planning for the invasion and occupation.

When the military sensibly pointed out that they needed to plan for the occupation:

> In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. > > Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.

http://articles.dailypress.com/2006-09-08/news/0609080088_1_...

When the State Department accurately predicted that the invasion and occupation would not be a cake-walk, it was largely ignored. As one example, that was the conclusion in 2003 — well before the full scope of the botch had become clear:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/world/struggle-for-iraq-pl...

Aside from the political/ethical discussion here: logistically, how did you arm yourself when abroad as a private citizen in the Middle East?

I'm guessing you get blessing from Iraqi and/or American embassies in advance? How do you ship arms without falling afoul of carrier and export issues? Or are there arms corporations that allow for pickup on location (or on US bases)?

It's your words that pit them in the same category as ISIS, not me (or rather you keep claiming that is what I'm doing, but it isn't what I've said anywhere).

Your claims have gone from they don't fight to you can't prove that they killed anyone when they fight. Mine has been they fight, and I'd note you seem to have conceded that, and yet still are accusing me of making stuff up.

I think that there is a difference between the work a hypothetical charity which pays for bodyguards for protection, and this, where charity workers are laying down covering fire.

There another version of that footage around where they are clearly aiming at ISIS snipers when providing covering fire. To me that doesn't make any difference, but perhaps it does to you?

I'd be interested in your views on the various Hamas and Hezbollah affiliated charity groups? To me they are clearly terrorist groups, but if I'm reading you correctly they are legitimate because they provide medical aid?

In Iraq in 2003-2004 it was "send one of my guards to the market to see what was on offer". I spent the entire time I was there trying to get a Sig or Glock; had a Browning Hi Power pretty early on, then upgraded to a CZ 97B once I found a way to get .45acp ammo. Also spent the entire time trying to get a decent AKM, never found one, ended up with an RPK. I saw some MP5s as well, but they were $3-5k, and 9mm isn't really a great round in FMJ, so I never got one. Obviously everything remained in country when I left.

I was locally contracted with DOD/etc and had letters from my customers authorizing me to be armed. (There was policy that such authorization had to come from the combatant commander, but in reality it got delegated pretty far down, and even if people in my customer orgs were not individually authorized to sign, no random MP would challenge those orgs.) It was a pretty ambiguous situation, but being American, I was essentially exempt from local law, and private citizens (Iraqis) were allowed one rifle for self defense in any case. There were some US bases where I wasn't allowed to carry, but the commanders were able to authorize that as well. The absolute worst thing that could happen from the US side would be "sent back to the US", but there was really no risk of that, and the most routine thing was at worst "please deposit your weapons with our office until you leave our base, if you don't have weapons authorization" on the biggest bases toward the end of the occupation -- and those are the places where I would have just secured it anyway in an armory because I didn't want to carry it around, and in any serious incident I would have been around professionals or could have picked up M4s off the ground.

Most private contractors were prohibited by their US issued contracts and their insurers from being armed, unless they were security companies. Many outside the wire contractors still armed themselves the same way I did.

The international shipping of arms is really the only problem; within a country like Iraq it really isn't a big deal. I did end up learning to do armorer level maintenance on the AK and Hi Power platforms while there, and made friends with a gunsmith.