Public Enquiry Project

Could Algeria be a model for success in Iraq?

Yesterday I was chatting with my neighbor who is an agent with the Defense Intelligence Agency. I was telling her of my experience when I was in Bangkok back in 1990. I remember reading in the English language Thai neswpaper how the last Communist insurgents were surrendering in a general amnesty. They were forgiven by the government if they came in and turned in their weapons.

Back in the 60s and 70s Thailand was also fighting a significant Communist guerilla movement with American help. The Vietnam War actually saved Thailand from the Communist plague by giving the Thai government time to defeat its own indiginous problem before the guerillas could get supplies and reinforcements from the Communist North Vietnamese.

I asked my friend "Is there a lesson we can learn from the Free World's success in Thailand?"

She answered "NO. The Thais are Budhists and the Iraqis are Muslims. Muslims just want to kill and die."

Hmm. I asked her "Well, can you tell me where an Islamist insurgency was defeated?"

And she answered "Algeria."

I then called my long time Algerian friend Kamel and asked him to tell me about how Algeria is doing now. Kamel was a Captain in the Algerian Army of Houari Boumedienne where his military specialty was "interogation." He always ducks my questions about that experience.

"Much better" he said. "Abdelazziz Bouteflika is the new president and he's a good man. His army has killed most of the Islamist insurgents with help from the French and the Americans. He forgave most of the rest with an amnesty, and there are now only a few holdouts in the mountains."

"When was the last battle?" I asked, and he responded "Just a few months ago."

These developments have given me hope that there is light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel as long as we stay the course.

Following is a BBC article about recent Algerian history:

It's time to join with Russia and drain the swamp.

Wed Sep 8, 2004

Russia prepared for pre-emptive strikes on 'terror bases' worldwide

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia is prepared to make pre-emptive strikes on "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world, the Interfax news agency cited the country's chief of staff as saying.
"With regard to preventive strikes on terrorist bases, we will take any action to eliminate terrorist bases in any region of the world. But this does not mean we will carry out nuclear strikes," General Yuri Baluyevsky said Wednesday.
Baluyevsky added that Russia's choice of action "will be determined by the concrete situation where ever it may be in the world.
"Military action is the last resort in the fight agaisnt terrorism."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1503&ncid=732&e=4&u=/afp/20040908/ts_afp/russia_attacks_military

My friends, now is the time to join our Russian friends and drain the swamp and kill all the mosquitoes. The tragic Russian school massacre was an al Qaeda operation. The Chechens were prominent in Afghanistan where they were trained in al Qaeda camps and they are now al Qaeda foot soldiers.

The resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan finds refuge in Iran. Hussein’s WMDs are hidden in Syria or Syrian-controlled Lebanon. If we don’t hunt down and kill our enemies we will have Bessan School Tragedy right here in River City.

The answer should be obvious. We must join our Russian friends and clean out the Middle East. It’s time for regime change in Iran and maybe Syria if it can’t be brought to heel.

The Vietnam War was the Right War at the Right Time for the Right Reasons and it was worth it!

The Vietnam War was the Right War at the Right Time for the Right Reasons and it was worth it!

President John F. Kennedy decided to stop the locust swarm-like advance of Communism in Southeast Asia for morally right and geopolitically correct reasons. He continued in the tradition of President Harry Truman and the old patriotic Democratic Party. President Lyndon B. Johnson loyally continued and expanded that effort to contain Communism.

Contain Communism? Modern Americans are prone to laugh at such a goal because they are totally ignorant of the bloody history of Communism because the Left liberal controlled Media-Academic Complex has done its best to erase it from our collective memory.

Here is the truth about Communism;

1 – From its inception by Karl Marx and its codification by Lenin, Communism was committed to unlimited violence to gain power and merciless unpredictable terror to keep it. The structure and brutality of the Soviet regime was purely the product of the fevered brain of Vladimir Ilych Lenin loosely guided by Karl Marx and totally driven by the Will to Power and a total disdain for humanity. Communist theory was never more than window dressing and marketing. He developed sophisticated propaganda tools – including hosts of American professors, artists and writers - as an instrument to totally destroy individual human rights.

2 – When it came to murder, however, Lenin was a piker compared to Stalin. Lenin was responsible for a mere few million deaths while Stalin obliterated scores of millions of thinking, feeling human beings, usually for no good reason. Soviet and Chinese Communism were the instruments of the destruction of more lives of men, women and children than all other human built agents of death in human history put together. Please note that this includes the European holocaust of the Nazis and the Asian holocaust of Imperial Japan.

By the way, Nazism, or National Socialism, was actually a Marxist heresy promoted by former Marxists that simply replaced the Bourgeoisie as the devil with Jews and other “inferior” races as the devils to fight. Nazism was also strongly supported by German university professors who wrote thousands of books and articles. A strong case can be made that Communism and National Socialism were just two forms of Marxist Socialism who hated each other the way Christian Europe was once composed of Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians who would gleefully burn each others babies alive.

Can there be any doubt that Kennedy and Johnson did the right thing in implementing Truman’s containment strategy? Can there be any doubt that Nixon was also correct to continue that bipartisan policy? Later I will explain how this policy was, in part, actually very successful.

So what are the results of the American political failure to win that war even in the face of the great success on the ground brought about by our patriotic soldiers and our superb military establishment? After we pulled out so ignominiously – I remember crying angrily as I watched those helicopters evacuating from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon – over two million Cambodians were murdered by the Communist Khmer Rouge and another million were murdered by the Communist Vietnamese.

So much for the heroism of the protestors under the leadership of John Kerry, Jane Fonda and their other “anti-war” cohorts. There is no doubt in my mind that those people have the blood of countless millions of innocent human beings on their hands.

On the other hand, the near destruction of the Communist Vietnamese military assets and their economy and the eventual defeat of the Khmer Rouge bought enough time for Thailand to successfully deal with its indigenous Communist insurgency. This saved hundreds of millions of citizens of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia from the murderous ravages of the greatest evil of the Twentieth Century.

So my fellow veterans and brothers; ease your souls. We couldn’t save the Vietnamese and the Cambodians, but we did save the rest of Southeast Asia. We can at least go to our graves with that satisfaction for all our hard work, blood and grief.

AL QAEDA TARGET - BOSTON OR NEW YORK?

A friend of mine who is a DIA anti-terrorism specialist just told me that Boston would not be attacked and New york probably would be. I asked him why and here is what he said:

1 - Boston has a substantial al Qaeda infrastructure, including bin Laden properties, because it is the perfect staging area for attacks on New York, only twenty minutes away by air.

2 - al Qaeda wants Kerry to win the election.

3 - Penn Station will be open during the convention in Madison Square Garden directly above it and it would be impossible to totally defend against a suitcase nuke or dirty bomb on a train in the station.

I'm happy that my town is safe but seriously concerned about my natal city of New York.

Adrian

General Adrian on War

Well, well, my friends. It’s time for you to listen to a grown up on matters of war and peace.

1 – Wartime is different from peacetime.
2 – Morality in wartime is different from morality in peacetime.
3 – War is savage and must be fought savagely if you want to win.
4 - Being nice to undefeated enemies always backfires because a committed enemy will correctly see your niceness as weakness; and this ALWAYS RESULTS in more death and destruction to your countrymen and civilians.
5 – Humiliation is a legitimate tactic in war and can actually save lives.
6 – Trying not to get your enemy mad at you is hopeless and foolish.
7 – Niceness and respect is only appropriate AFTER VICTORY. The USA has been magnanimous in victory since the twentieth century began.

The sad fact is that all this fuss over the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners will weaken our war effort and cost many extra lives, both Iraqi and American. In fact, Democrat policy since Korea has weakened our nation and cost millions of lives. Democrats haven’t won a war since WW2 because they try to not get our enemies mad and thus they’ve caused the enslavement and death of millions of Eastern Europeans at Potsdam; the enslavement and death millions of North Koreans; the enslavement and death millions of Vietnamese, Khmer people and Laotians.

For these clear cut reasons, it is crucial that the Democrats be kept out of power.

General Adrian

Prof Delong is either clueless or a liar

FIRST READ PROF DELONGS SCURILOUS LIES ABOUT PRESIDENT BUSH, THEN READ WHAT THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION, OF WHICH HE WAS A MEMBER, SAID ABOUT THE IRAQ - AL QAEDA CONNECTION.

ADRIAN

An interesting juxtaposition.

Dan Froomkin writes:

washingtonpost.com – White House Briefing: President Bush yesterday pointed to Abu Musab Zarqawi as the "best evidence" of a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.... [H]e... [put] himself at odds with the Sept. 11 commission and the intelligence community.... Communications between Zarqawi and al Qaeda that Bush alluded to yesterday took place several months after Hussein was removed from power. And a new report released this morning by the Sept. 11 commission declares that there is "no credible evidence" that Hussein's government collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, including the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings....

"Before the war, intelligence officials said, Zarqawi was operating with the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Ansar Al Islam in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, not in territory under the control of Hussein's regime...." Dana Milbank writes in today's Washington Post that Bush "renewed an assertion that Hussein had longstanding ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network, one of the justifications underpinning the Iraq war. The alleged link between Hussein and al Qaeda has taken on more importance with the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.... Vice President Cheney... said in a speech in Orlando on Monday that Hussein 'had long-established ties with al Qaeda.' Bush, asked yesterday if he would qualify that claim or cite evidence to support it, defended Cheney's assertion, citing the terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi. 'Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al Qaeda,' Bush said during his appearance with Karzai. 'He's the person who's still killing. Remember the e-mail exchange between al Qaeda leadership and he, himself, about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom?'"

And Alan Murray writes:

WSJ.com - Political Capital: Did [George W. Bush] lie about Iraq's ties to terrorism? There has never been hard evidence of Iraqi involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, but... Saddam Hussein... support[ed]... anti-Israeli terrorists. Mr. Bush's broad-brush division of the world into good guys and bad guys can be criticized for its crudeness and simplicity. But most who know him believe it is how he sees the world. Even many of the most fervent admirers of Bill Clinton believe that the day he went on television and said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," he broke his covenant with the American people. And many of the harshest critics of George W. Bush will acknowledge that, however wrongheaded his policies, he has not, to their knowledge, broken that same covenant. The distinction is important. We can vigorously debate President Bush's policies without impugning his character. If the day comes when Americans conclude that all presidents are liars, then all presidents will lose the incentive to tell the truth.

Alan Murray wants to say that Bush's claim that attacking Iraq was part of our war to destroy Al Qaeda and its ilk is not a lie but rather a "crude and simplistic" but honest failure on his part to see any meaningful distinction between the terrorists funded by Our Friends the Saudis who attack Israel (with whom Saddam Hussein was allied before 911) and Al Qaeda (with whom Saddam Hussein was not allied before 911).

In this, I believe, Murray has been heavily lobbied by White House insiders--people who say that George W. Bush is neither a habitual liar nor totally clueless, but an honest and not-too-swift man with a crude and simplistic view of the world, a man who should never have become a president, but who is nevertheless trying his best. We need, I can hear them say, to turn down the partisan rhetoric--and need to stop maligning George W. Bush, who has many weaknesses but not those he is currently being blamed for.

And so Murray writes his article: call George W. Bush crude, call his view of the world simplistic, but don't call Bush a liar.

But fate takes a hand. A malign fate.

George W. Bush, on the day that Murray's article hit the newsstands, says that Cheney is right to claim that there were long-established ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, witness Abu Musab Zarqawi. Thus the wiggle room between "falsehood" and "crude and simplistic view" that Murray was attempting to buttress collapses under the weight of George W. Bush's words. We are left with the choice we had in 1987 when Reagan said that, "I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." Liar? Clueless? Both?

In Reagan's case, it didn't matter much what we concluded. In either case, what we should do was clear: Replace the White House chief of staff with the highly-respected Howard Baker. Let George Shultz run all of foreign policy. Let Howard Baker make sure that nothing bad happened again inside the Whtie House. And let Reagan ride off into the sunset.

But what do we do in Bush's case? We face the same problem: it's not that he is simplistic and crude--but honest. He may be clueless--not understand the intelligence on Abu Musad Zarqawi and his connections. He may be lying.

What do we do?

And why haven't the grownup Republicans made the same kind of move that they made back in 1987?

Posted by DeLong

It's time to DEBATE the use of torture in wartime. I say torture is a legitimate tool in wartime.

TORTURING DETAINEES IS SOMETHING ALL OUR ENEMIES HAVE DONE AND WILL DO AND WE ARE BLINDING OURSELVES IN THE FACE OF A DETERMINED AND EVIL ENEMY IF WE DON'T. THE PROMINENT LIBERAL PROF. ALAN DERSHOWITZ MADE THE CASE IN FAVOR THAT CONVINCED ME.

IT'S TIME FOR THE US TO WAKE UP AND ACT LIKE ADULTS DEFENDING EVERYTHING THEY HOLD SACRED IF WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS WAR.

SENSITIVE PEACE TYPES HAVE NEVER ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING OF VALUE AND, IN FACT, HAVE CAUSED THE UNNECESSARY DEATH OF MANY OF OUR COUNTRYMEN.

WE MUST STOP BEATING UP OUR SOLDIERS AND THE CHAIN OF COMMAND AND DEBATE THIS ISSUE PUBLICLY. I AM EXTREMELY DIAPPOINTED THAT NO ONE IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS THE BALLS TO TAKE THIS ON.

ADRIAN

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/13/wguan13.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/06/13/ixworld.html

Interrogation abuses were 'approved at highest levels'
By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 13/06/2004)

New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington this week, adding further to pressure on the White House.

The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.

According to lawyers familiar with the Red Cross reports, they will contradict previous testimony by senior Pentagon officials who have claimed that the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated incident.

"There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," said Scott Horton, the former chairman of the New York Bar Association, who has been advising Pentagon lawyers unhappy at the administration's approach. "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."

A string of leaked government memos over the past few days has revealed that President George W Bush was advised by Justice Department officials and the White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzalez, that Geneva Conventions on torture did not apply to "unlawful combatants", captured during the war on terror.

Members of Congress are now demanding access to all White House memos on interrogation techniques, a request so far refused by the United States attorney-general, John Ashcroft.

As the growing scandal threatens to undermine President Bush's re-election campaign, senior aides have acknowledged for the first time that the abuse of detainees can no longer be presented as the isolated acts of a handful of soldiers at the Abu Ghraib.

"It's now clear to everyone that there was a debate in the administration about how far interrogators could go," said a legal adviser to the Pentagon. "And the answer they came up with was 'pretty far'. Now that it's in the open, the administration is having to change that answer somewhat."

In the latest revelation, yesterday's Washington Post published leaked documents revealing that Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US officer in Iraq, approved the use of dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns and sensory deprivation for prisoners whenever senior officials at the Abu Ghraib jail wished. A memo dated October 9, 2003 on "Interrogation Rules of Engagement", which each military intelligence officer was obliged to sign, set out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics they could use - including stress positions and solitary confinement for more than 30 days.

The White House has ordered a damage-limitation exercise to try to prevent the abuse row undermining President Bush's re-election campaign. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, has ordered that all deaths of detainees held in US military custody are to be reported immediately to criminal investigators. Deaths in custody will also be reported to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, and to Mr Rumsfeld himself.

The Pentagon has also announced an investigation into the condition of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, where more than 600 prisoners suspected of links with al-Qaeda are being held. The inquiry will be led by Vice-Adml Albert Church, who has been ordered to investigate reports that extreme interrogation techniques "migrated" from Guantanamo to Iraq. "This is not going to be a whitewash," said the Pentagon adviser. "The administration is finally realising how damaging this scandal could become."

A new investigator has also been appointed to lead the inquiry into abuse at Abu Ghraib. Gen George Fay, a two-star general, will be replaced by a more senior officer. Gen Fay, according to US military convention, did not have the authority to question his superiors. His replacement indicates that the Abu Ghraib inquiry will now go far beyond the activities of the seven military police personnel accused of mistreating Iraqi detainees.

Legal and constitutional experts have expressed astonishment at the judgments made by administration lawyers on interrogation techniques. In one memo, written in January 2002, Mr Gonzalez told President Bush that the nature of the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions".

Scott Silliman, a former US air force lawyer and the director of the Centre for Law Ethics and National Security at Duke University, said: "What you have is a culture of avoidance of law rather than compliance with it."

A separate memo, written by Pentagon lawyers in March 2003, stated that "the infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental is insufficient to amount to torture. [The pain] must be of such a high level of intensity that it is difficult for the subject to endure".

UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after

THE CRIMINAL LIBERAL MEDIA AND THE ANTI-AMERICAN DEMOCRATS ARE THE LIERS.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_1.html

UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, June 11, 2004
The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that "the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," Middle East Newsline reported.

"It's being exported," Perricos said after the briefing. "It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal."

"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.

He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destionations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.

"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax."

The UNMOVIC report said Iraqi missiles were dismantled and exported to such countries as Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile, one of at least 12, was discovered in a junk yard, replete with UN tags. In Jordan, UN inspectors found 20 SA-2 engines as well as components for solid-fuel for missiles.

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," Buchanan said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors."

UN inspectors have assessed that the SA-2 and the short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missile were shipped abroad by agents of the Saddam regime. Buchanan said UNMOVIC plans to inspect other sites, including in Turkey.

In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.

Another Leftist criticizes Democrats' antiwar stance

http://news.yahoo.com/news?pl=story&cid=615&u=/nm/20040611/pl_nm/campaign_putin_dc_1&printer=1

Putin Takes Bush's Side Against Democrats on Iraq

Thu Jun 10, 8:41 PM ET

SEA ISLAND, Ga (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) stepped into the U.S. political campaign on Thursday, saying the Democrats had "no moral right" to criticize President Bush (news - web sites) over Iraq (news - web sites).

The Kremlin leader, answering a reporter's question in Sea Island, Georgia, suggested that the Democrats were two-faced in criticizing Bush on Iraq since it had been the Clinton administration that authorized the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by U.S. and NATO (news - web sites) forces.

The reporter had asked Putin to respond to U.S. press articles questioning Russia's place at the G8 feast of leading industrial countries.

Putin brushed these off, saying such articles were part of an internal U.S. political debate.

He went on: "I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same.

"It suffices to recall Yugoslavia. Now look at them. They don't like what President Bush is doing in Iraq."

Russia was adamantly opposed to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, as it has been to the U.S.-led military operation Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

The NY Times on the Occupation of Germany

The Occupation of Germany

"With all the nay saying about our presence in Iraq, it's worth noting that none of these difficulties are particularly new. No postwar occupation has been without serious challenges, including the occupation of Germany after World War II. The New York Times ran a series of news stories in late 1945 reporting, in part, the following:

"Headline: Germans Reveal Hate of Americans. Oct. 31, 1945. (Stories)
The German attitude toward the American occupation forces has swung from apathy and surface friendliness to active dislike. According to a military government official, this is finding expression in the organization of numerous local anti-American organizations throughout the zone and in a rapid increase in the number of attacks on American soldiers. There were more such attacks in the first week of October than in the preceding five months of the occupation, this source declared. This official views the situation as so serious that he and others are protesting the withdrawal of 1,600 experienced military-government officers from the German governments on township, county and regional levels between Nov. 1 and Dec. 15."

Sound familiar? You know, this is what I call -- I don't mean to be redundant -- but historical perspective. So many people think that we've never been through anything like this before. "Iraq is horrible and wrong." It's understandable when you look at the press coverage the Democrats are getting, talking about this "micromanaging" every little thing that goes wrong. How many news reports were there of World War II when one or two soldiers died? Zip. We didn't know until we went to the Movietone news on Saturday. We didn't really see any moving pictures, you know, we had newspapers in their daily accounts. Not being critical, I'm just saying it's different. The coverage is different, but the reality is not different. What happens in war happens in war, always has, always will.


Another headline, November 18th, 1945, from the New York Times: Loss of Victory in Germany Through U.S. Policy Feared. November 18th. They thought we were going to lose. Our occupation was going so bad, that we were going to lose the war! (Stories)

"Grave concern was expressed today by informed officials that the United States might soon lose the fruits of victory in Germany through the failure to prepare adequately for carrying out its long-term commitments under the Potsdam Declaration."

Why, where have I heard this before? I think it goes something like this. [Doing John Kerry impression] "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and thooose neocons, theeey didn't plan effectively for the aftermath! Whhhy, this is an abject failure. Whhhy, we're losing this war." Or losing the peace, whatever the hell they say we're losing. "They didn't plan for the aftermath. They had no idea what was going to happen." And look at this, 1945. This is almost 60 years ago, and it's the exact same thing.

"Might soon lose the fruits of victory in Germany through the failure to prepare adequately for carrying out its long-term commitments under the Potsdam Declaration."

"Germans Declare Americans Hated, December 3rd, 1945. (Stories)
An exhaustive compilation of opinions of Germans in all walks of life on their reaction to the United States occupation of their country was released this afternoon from the confidential status under which it was submitted to officials of the United States Forces in the European Theatre recently. Bitter resentment and deep disappointment was voiced over the Americans' first six months of occupation, though there was some praise for the improvements in transportation, health conditions, book publishing and entertainment."

The New York Times then, the New York Times today. Sixty years ago. Virtually identical. And one more, December 19th, 1945. "German Election Set In Towns of U.S. Zone. (Stories) "United States Seventh Army headquarters announced today that plans had been completed for initial German elections in January at Gemuende. A statement said that a vast majority of Germans remained passive in attitude toward politics and displayed no disposition to take over civic responsibilities."