posted
That's the assertion of a war correspondent who has covered the military for decades. Speaking on NPR this week (sorry, no link and I didn't get his name), he drew this conclusion based on the recent strategy statements from the White House. Basically, he sees the following "success" scenario:
1) We curtail our spending and exposure of our troops to harm. This has to happen in the relatively short term. The $1.5 Billion per week figure was mentioned as current spending and he basically said that we won't keep that up for very much longer. He also said that the death and injury exposure for US soldiers must diminish or there will be too much domestic pressure on Bush (or his successor) to withdraw completely.
2) Our role will be to serve as protection for Iraqi police and soldiers as they do the actual work to quell the insurgency. His point on this was that we cannot possibly win the "hearts and minds" campaign and what we need to do is back off from our role as enforcement and let the Iraqis police their own citizens. The point being that if this doesn't happen, the Iraqi people will eventually tire of our presence and seek out a strongman leader, who is almost certain to be as bad or worse than Saddam in terms of brutally crushing opposition. He said that we would be looking at Iraq going into a civil war at that point.
3) The 10-15 year figure that he put forward is partly from US military assessments, but also his own "take" on it. He said, basically, that's how this is GOING to play out. If we stay in Iraq at all, it's going to be because we figured out a role that has a clearly defined strategy and gets us out of the fighting mode as much as possible, as quickly as possible. But he put it this way:
"I live down the street from a kindergarten. I look at those children entering the school each day and I think 'some of those kids are going to go to Iraq.'"
dkw and I had a discussion about this. It seems like what Iraq may really need is advisors on how to establish democracy at the grass roots level. That's not actually something that I would expect the military to do. They can certainly teach Iraqi police and soldiers, but once the insurgency has diminished capacity to fight...then what?
If we're going to be there long term (like a decade or two), then I hope it's because we are doing more than security work. And, really, more than security plus infrastructure rebuilding. Getting schools up and running again is a great start. Reliable water is a great start too.
But if we are really serious about encouraging democracy there, I think we should be sending people over there who know how to help groups get organized for positive action at the community level.
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I completely agree that more will be required than security work and infrastructure restoration, Bob.
However...if we did it now? I'm sure you can imagine how juicy thousands of soft civilian wandering targets would be, who must by definition mingle a great deal with the populace, and perhaps even specifically with antagonistic segments of the populace. Ensuring their protection would require a drastic restructuring of our military presence within Iraq, which by definition would include a major increase in the number of troops there.
This is setting aside political considerations, which to my mind have included an unwillingness on the Bush Administration's part to base its troop and spending estimates on the worst-case scenario, rather than the best one. I just don't see this administration being willing to increase the number of troops within Iraq to ensure the safety of such democracy advisors.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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The correspondent's opinion has kind of been what I think we should have said we were going to do from day one.
What Iraq needs to have a succesful democracy, imho, is stability, honest government, and more exposure to the West. All of these things can best be served by us staying there for a long time.
Of course, as everyone knows, we built our little spot in the green zone with an eye to being there for a while....
quote: But if we are really serious about encouraging democracy there, I think we should be sending people over there who know how to help groups get organized for positive action at the community level.
This statement can mean a lot, but I think that if we just stay there, make Iraq peaceful enough like, say, Bahrain where foreigners can move in, I think that there will be enough bleed from the different cultures that they'll learn from us. People are usually smart enough to see what's best for them, and left to their own devices, and having the freedom to do so, they'll go for it.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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The general guess by policy analysts is generally around six years. We could be reduced to a token presence in three, we could be there for a decade.
It's so hard to pin down; this is because whether or not we are doing any good at all is presently hard to measure and may have no bearing on whether or not we do stay.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Whether or not we send in lots of western support (and some parts of Iraq are peaceable enough we could send substantial quantities), we need to be protecting the professional class of Iraqi workers who we depend on to run the country. We used to see reports all the time of doctors, bureaucrats, lawyers, and other professionals receiving death threats or being killed just for doing their normal work; that problem remains, though the reports of such things don't make as prominent news coverage as they used to.
Right now many important parts of Iraq are in chaos. We need to end that, and our current troop levels are obviously not working. We need to increase the number of troops in Iraq (be they US or international) and systematically pacify crucial areas, allowing people to return to work. Then we should pour in money (mostly not free money; loans, co-owned facilities, et cetera) to those areas and return them to general working order, as well as making them attractive places to live and work (the more normal people who come to an area, the harder for terror to hold sway).
However, this will not happen under the current administration. The 'we will stand down as the Iraqi forces stand up' political ploy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H policy guarantees we cannot have sufficient security in the region, since the Iraqi forces that are intended to stand up are not going to be (even on paper) the equal of the forces we have in place (more men, but far less effective) even on paper (in reality significant parts of Iraqi forces are on leave or have deserted), and the forces we have in place currently are clearly not capable of handling the situation.
So yeah. Hopefully (though likely not, of whichever party) whoever is elected next will be willing to do something politically unpopular because it is the right thing.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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The current Iraqi government's response to the situation in Lebanon doesn't seem to bode well. I'm dreading the possibility that Iraq might turn into a fundamentalist state under supposedly democratic principles. Or simply one that's openly hostile to its "liberator." Hamas' recent victory is a frightening precedent.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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Completely anecdotal: I have an uncle who is a major in the marines- intelligence and strategy of some kind. He has commented that the infrastructure they routinely plan to put in place in Iraq is one that will be under construction for at least 10 more years. So we are planning for a military presence for a LONG time- according to him.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Why would we not want to be there in some capacity? I am not sure why we would ever want to totally pull out of Iraq? We can't learn from them, and they cannot learn from us if we are not there
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I think that if we leave the whole gov't will fall apart pretty soon afterward. I also think that if we don't leave, the gov't will fall apart around our ears a little farther down the road than if we left sooner. Now, I don't have anything to back me up; other than the faith I don't have in our and the Iraqi gov'ts. I am right a lot though.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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If anyone can either find the whole interview or a transcript of the interview, I would like to read it.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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The Republicans are attaking Murtha and other Democrats for being soft on the war. Hard, soft, the only fact that we can take away from the past three years is that the current administration is Bad at War.
Basically, President Bush went into Iraq with Hope, Faith, Ignorance, Rumsfeld and Haliburton. That is not much of a plan. The Faith was not Faith in God, or in Jesus Christ. It was faith in $, in pure laze faire capitalism, in the power of the markets without considering that there are many organizations out there more powerful, on the short term, than the markets, and that they will want to become even more powerful.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I disagree. They went into Iraq with the dream of a better life for Iraqis, cheaper oil for the west and a gigantic bucket of shortsighted stupidity.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I don't think we'll be there in anywhere near the numbers we're there in now. I think we'll pull out of the north entirely (which we almost have) and the outlying provinces, and small garrisons would be in each city ro back up the locals.
I don't see any help from the rest of the world. Even going to the UN and admitting we screwed up and need help would only get us ridiculed and no help.
But the status quo will not last forever. Either we'll eventually give up and pull out, or something will have to change. We simply can't afford to sustain the war at it's current levels, in lives, materiel or money.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Dream of a better life for Iraqis? When do politicians ever genuinely care about things like that? *cynical* If they really cared about Iraq and the Iraqis they wouldn't have gone to war without thinking it out. To me it feels like they thought this would be an easy popularity building battle started at an ideal time, when Americans were still fuming and grieving from 9/11. They probably thought it would be mopped up in a few months and they'd come out looking like heros. Not the case. Instead Iraq is pure chaos and leaving Iraq = even more chaos but staying there is a strain on our budget on the troops on everything. It just seems hopeless to me. You cannot GIVE people democrasy, they have to want to work for it and fight for it themselves, otherwise you just have a weak puppet government that falls apart with one sneeze.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:They went into Iraq with the dream of a better life for Iraqis, cheaper oil for the west and a gigantic bucket of shortsighted stupidity.
airmanfour,
I don't know if the admin had the Iraqies on its mind. At best, the admin had a version of freedom and democracy on its mind, and placed all of its hope on the compelling attraction of those two virtues.
As to caring about the actual, individual Iraqies. I'm not sure.
posted
While I don't think pure chaos is a fair term, I have to wonder at a country where 3,400 people died in July, and the prime minister says they're on the right road and that things are improving, this despite that being more than double how many people died in January. That's more people than were killed on 9/11.
Something is very, very wrong over there. Calling it pure chaos ignores the seriousness of the situation, it's too blithely hyperbolic, and makes it to be honest, doesn't do anything for meaningful conversation. Not recognizing that Iraq is to some varying degree a mess though, is just as bad. The worse it gets, the more I'm being pushed into the "If Iraqis don't stand up and fight for Democracy, why are we doing it for them?" camp.
The majority of the stories I see are this:
American troops die in gun battle with Shiite militia (or whoever), in other news, 40 Iraqi civilians were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad.
We seem to be doing a lot of dying for a country that either doesn't want us there, or doesn't seem willing to fight for it's own freedom, or both. If either are the case, I say it's time to go. If they aren't willing to fight, then neither am I. If they don't want us there, I say let's oblige them and take off.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:We seem to be doing a lot of dying for a country that either doesn't want us there, or doesn't seem willing to fight for it's own freedom, or both. If either are the case, I say it's time to go. If they aren't willing to fight, then neither am I. If they don't want us there, I say let's oblige them and take off.
If you ask Iraqis, "Do you want an American military presence within Iraq?" you'll of course get a definitive 'no' generally speaking, at least according to the last polling I saw about that. If you ask them, "Would you be in favor of the American military leaving now?" the response is different, also according to the last polling.
Seeing as how Iraqis are killing Iraqis more than they are Americans, some of them are clearly trying to improve things.
You aren't fighting at all, Lyrhawn. I am not insulting you or even criticizing you, to be clear. I'm just pointing out a fact.
Whether or not we should take off right now is a serious question which hinges on more than just what Iraqi polling data indicates in the present. American interests in the region are not limited to the freedom of Iraqis.
Or are you seriously suggesting that American interests would be served at this point by 'taking off'?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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The Iraqi people are still afraid to some degree of speaking up for democracy or their own wants. There is a nasty trend of people dying for standing out from the crowd.
We don't have a large group of radicals at our disposal. In the revolutionary war people on the local level were supportive of troops and worked to sabotage the brits. Iraqis know the dangers of speaking up for what they believe in, and don't want to see their family slayed because they choose to speak out. So we are not going to get an accurate representation of how much the populace is behind us.
Ten years sounds like a fair amount of time. Americans seem to forget that we didn't set up a military base in Germany for giggles. Once we achieved the main ojective: get the madman out of power, we stuck around to make sure there weren't any more little dictators waiting in the wings to take over. The Soviets threatened to destabilize our section of Germany, so we continued to hang out there. That is what Syria and Iran threaten to do, reverse any and all effect we have had on the country.
It wont be ten years of fighting at the current pace though. I agree, the American people would demand we withdraw if we continue blowing through a billion plus each week. I predict that within the next two years things will begin to slow down IF we don't back down. There will be a flare up of vioence as we elect our new president because the extremists understand how we work. We don't want blood shed and will elect any one who promises to end it.
So our job as Americans is to not fall for their propoganda. The enemy wants us to pull out. We didn't pull out when troops died in WWII because we knew the problem wouldn't just go away and the same is true for this war.
Posts: 17 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:We seem to be doing a lot of dying for a country that either doesn't want us there, or doesn't seem willing to fight for it's own freedom, or both. If either are the case, I say it's time to go. If they aren't willing to fight, then neither am I. If they don't want us there, I say let's oblige them and take off.
If you ask Iraqis, "Do you want an American military presence within Iraq?" you'll of course get a definitive 'no' generally speaking, at least according to the last polling I saw about that. If you ask them, "Would you be in favor of the American military leaving now?" the response is different, also according to the last polling.
Seeing as how Iraqis are killing Iraqis more than they are Americans, some of them are clearly trying to improve things.
You aren't fighting at all, Lyrhawn. I am not insulting you or even criticizing you, to be clear. I'm just pointing out a fact.
Whether or not we should take off right now is a serious question which hinges on more than just what Iraqi polling data indicates in the present. American interests in the region are not limited to the freedom of Iraqis.
Or are you seriously suggesting that American interests would be served at this point by 'taking off'?
I don't automatically see the fact that more Iraqis are killing each other rather than us as a GOOD thing. The ones who are doing the killing of other Iraqis are the ones who want to set up a fundamentalist Shiite Islamic state with close ties to Iran most likely. Now, I'm sure THEY view that as an improvement, but I certainly don't.
And you're right, personally I'm not holding a gun, but that doesn't mean I'm not involved. Beyond the all purpose "my tax dollars yadda yadda yadda" I have family and friends who were recently in, and still are in, the military, in Iraq. Just because I'm not risking my own life doesn't mean I have nothing personally invested in the outcome of the conflict.
I never said we should leave IMMEDIATELY, as in, tomorrow, August 29th, we load the ships and head home. But for all the talk there is about the negative effect a timetable will have on the conflict, it might also help to light a fire under the a-- of everyone over there currently not doing anything to speed the process of our withdrawel.
We'll still have our army in Kuwait, our navy in Bahrain, our air force in Turkey among other places, and we still have plenty of forces in Afghanistan. We're heavily involved in the region, but do you think that what is currently happening is doing wonders for the American PR effort? The status quo doesn't work. It doesn't serve our interests any better I think than leaving would. So we have to ask ourselves if there is any reason to believe it will get better, especially given it has only gotten WORSE recently. And if we come to the conclusion that there is no hope of things getting better with the current policies, then it's time to rexamine and change those policies.
Whether that involves leaving, or transferring power to an international force, or whatever, it's time for a change.
Edit to add a quick note to Karmen -
Comparing the current situation in Iraq to Germany during WW2 is almost comparing apples to oranges, in that they are both armed conflicts, in the same way that apples and oranges are both fruits, but similiarities tend to be harder to find after that.
Post war Germany was a massive American rebulding effort that much of the German population WELCOMED. Everything that Bush more or less promised us we'd get, in the way of grateful citizens dancing in the streets and singing our praises, we more or less DID get from Germany. There was no guerilla warfare lasting for years afterwards, there wasn't the same kind of hardline opposition to our help. The people there accepted what we had to offer, and worked hard together, to improve what was left of their nation.
Suggesting that the situation is like that in Iraq is laughable.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I think the real plan was to have a military presence in Iraq indefinately. I don't think they were planning on that presence being under active resistance for nearly as long as it has.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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I dislike the "if they're not fighting for their own freedom why should we do it for them" line of thought. First, what does that mean for the average Iraqi? How are they supposed to fight and whom are they supposed to fight? Our own military with all its "intelligence" and resources behind it have had trouble answering that very same question.
When your neighbors are driving car bombs downtown and blowing things up, what do you do? Grab a gun and shoot them first? No, the peaceful people in Iraq aren't really in a position to do much "fighting" at all. Sure they can fight with their votes (like we do), but it's not like the choices are "Candidate A who will make Iraq strong and democratic" and "Candidate B who is out to install his narrow view of Islam as law". So the only way to measure their "fighting" is by voter turnout, and it seems like that has been laudably high, if we can believe our own press.
So, what do you mean, Lyrhawn, by "fighting for freedom" and how, exactly are the Iraqis not doing this and what should they do differently? And for that matter, which Iraqis.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I'm not entirely in agreement with this line of thought, but like I said, I feel I'm being pushed further and further towards it with every story I read of sectarian violence, and what appears to be a total lack of understand from everyone, including Iraq's government, on what to do about it, and what is really going on. Is it a civil war? If it is, who are we to decide who wins and who loses? Playing kingmaker over there got us Saddam, it got the Shah overthrown and Khomeini in power.
If it isn't a civil war then what is it? Why are roving bands of militias still freely roving the streets of Iraq four years after major combat operations were supposed to have ended? Why are their twice as many civilian deaths ocurring now than did 9 months ago? That country can make all the democratic progress it want, but if it's still Mogadishu writ large at the end of the day, I don't see how it really matters.
"If they're not fighting for their freedom why should we?" is in some ways a misdirection. Certainly they are paying for their freedom, in blood. Is it possible we're asking too much by forcing Iraq to stay united as a single country? Six months ago I would have called that line callous, but now it starts to make a bit more sense, the more I hear about the horrible state of readiness of Iraqi armed forces, the more I hear about civilians dying in blasts, and American troops in gun battles with militias, and when I hear that there are LESS battle ready units now than there were a few months ago.
It's frustrating, and the surface argument that some opponents of the war are using is the "not fighting for their freedom" argument, because it is a parody of Bush's "as they stand up, we'll stand down" argument. The problem with his words, is that they either aren't standing up in enough numbers, or they are standing up AGAINST us.
I'm at the point where I question whether or not staying there if the status quo remains unchanged is worth it, for all parties involved.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Whether or not we send in lots of western support (and some parts of Iraq are peaceable enough we could send substantial quantities), we need to be protecting the professional class of Iraqi workers who we depend on to run the country.
Too late. The brain drain was '05-'06: professionals, specialists, and essentially the bulk of anyone who was in any socioeconomic condition to flee comfortably, ... they fled.
The remnants have holed up and shored up, or aligned themselves with fissiparous elements like the Badr.
Nice catch, though. Few people bring up the white-collar flight in Iraq.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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The problem from the beginning has been the Bush administration's oversimplified ways of approaching the war on terror. They seem to still think it is good vs. evil, us vs. them, democracy vs. fascism, and that thus the only approach is to fight the enemy head on. Unfortunately, the issues are more complicated than that. You can't just invade countries unilaterally and then expect them to become what you want them to become. You can't fight one enemy without exposing opening for other enemies. You can't take an ends-justifies-means approach on the geneva convention, and then expect to be viewed as a good guy. And most of all, you can't just fight your enemies without fixing the underlying problems that created them. We may have taken out Saddam, but there is a reason Saddam existed in Iraq - and we have had no plan for fixing that underlying reason. It will certainly take a great deal of time to do so.
I have no idea how long we will be in Iraq. But I do think politicians are foolish for proposing we leave now. Perhaps we should take a different approach, but now that we have started this war, we need to finish it - rather than let Iraq fully transform into a terrorist state. It might happen anyway, but then again we might be able to stop it. It may just take a whole lot of time and money.
In the meantime... we should probably work to get some people into office that will take a less simplistic approach to foreign affairs in the future. Maybe they will have some better ideas... Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Samprimary: yeah, it sucks. There're still some in existence, though, just mostly not working in their fields -- a lot of people were unwilling to leave their homes and just quit when they received threats saying quit or be killed.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by KarlEd: \Our own military with all its "intelligence" and resources behind it have had trouble answering that very same question.
Just because you don't know the answer, doesn't mean it isn't known in the right circles. The hardest part of dealing with intelligence (you may notice the absence of quotation marks) is dealing with it appropriately. And I think it's safe to say it hasn't been.
I've noticed a tendency to bash intel when talking about Iraq, which I don't think is fair. It's the people that get it that screw up, not necessarily the entire discipline as a whole. If this continues you may soon be reading a lot of threads involving how much lawyers, authors, and programmers suck. Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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airmanfour: I agree and disagree. Many people in the intelligence community acted wholly appropriately. However, there was signficant misrepresentation of intelligence at several levels (perhaps invited misrepresentation, but misrepresentation nonetheless) that we know of, and significant issues with intelligence sharing and overblown need for ownership of types of intelligence.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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fugu - I think it's safe to say that the intelligence comunity has almost no say in how the information pushed up the ladder is going to be represented at all. It's not the people in the community that acted inappropriately, I'm of the opinion it was misused when it got to the level where it could be used politically.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Dream of a better life for Iraqis? When do politicians ever genuinely care about things like that? *cynical*
Y'know, it's not like I particularly care for the Bush administration. But politicians are humans too, and do occasionally have human motivations. Such as, for example, wanting to extend peace through a region.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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The intelligence community isn't just the people at the bottom of the ladder, its (at least) everyone from the heads of the agencies on down, plus the national security advisor and associated minions, plus a good number of other people.
There were instances of misrepresentation at several levels, including the head of the CIA, some individuals below him in the CIA (notably including most of the people involved in that bogus threat assessment for Iraq), and a few people in other positions (notably including his national security advisor).
It was not merely the flawed collection of the intelligence that led to errors. Several errors were propagated by an unwillingness to defy administration expectations or a desire to satisfy administration expectations (no knowing which) by several persons within the intelligence community. The most significant misrepresentations were by those outside the community, but in at least some cases they were merely exaggerations of distortions already in the presentation.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I disagree. Once objectivism leaves you're not dealing with intel as a science any more. And that's what it is supposed to be, a science. The CIA not as much as the other members, because they're working with the least dependable of mediums, but they too should remain as objective as possible.
The bottom line is that the blame going to a shadowy form that can't be readily identified is convenient for the people that actually screwed up. And I think that's unfair.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Intel is a science, but it is a science of conjecture and possibility. It necessarily involves speculation and judgement calls based on little but experience and intuition.
Moreover, you don't seem to disagreeing overall. Many of the problems were that the CIA (and the national security advisor, among others) weren't objective in their assessments. Whereever that happened it was a problem with the intelligence community.
The primary blame is with the administration, both for directly altering the assessments conveyed to them and for pressuring members of the intelligence community to present biased assessments. However, the intelligence community is to fault to the extent it bowed to those pressures or distorted intelligence assessments for any other reasons (there is evidence a few members of the community had anti-Iraq axes to grind).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Intel is a science, but it is a science of conjecture and possibility. It necessarily involves speculation and judgement calls based on little but experience and intuition.
Interesting.
You give me the evidence, and I would have no problem agreeing. How many of those biased assessments have you read? Which members had an anti-Iraqi axe to grind?
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I've read several, I suggest you start with the NYT's excellent article on the aluminum tubes evidence, particularly as presented in the National Intelligence Estimate (also worthwhile reading, at least what can be read, which is mainly scattered quotations).
quote:Suddenly, Joe's work was ending up in classified intelligence reports being read in the White House. Indeed, his analysis was the primary basis for one of the agency's first reports on the tubes, which went to senior members of the Bush administration on April 10, 2001. The tubes, the report asserted, "have little use other than for a uranium enrichment program."
(Note that the quote from the report was quickly determined to be false by Energy Department nuclear scientists), and that there were significant other reasons to be doubtful they were part of a nuclear program -- Iraq was pursuing them extremely openly, for instance.
The Congressional report also notes several ways intelligence was badly represented.
A nice quotation from a senior CIA analyst is in it:
quote:"Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized,"
As for people with an axe to grind, there're the people who took the words of a source "who was deemed a fabricator" (that's a quotation from an intelligence agent reporting to the Congressional investigation), not to mention our good friend "Curve Ball", the source of known doubtful origin and uncorroborated intelligence, to administration officials as the big sources on a short list about supposed Iraqi biological weapons programs. Rice is also shown to have either lied about intelligence on Iraq or been incompetent in keeping up with reports sent to her in the NYT article.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:"The Baghdad coroner's office reported 1,600 bodies arrived in June and more than 1,800 in July, 90 percent of which were assessed to be the result of executions."
The report said the quarter had seen a 51 percent increase in Iraqi casualties and a 15 percent increase in the number of attacks.
But it isn't civil war. What has to happen for it to be called a civil war? One faction of the population has prosecuted an undeclared war on another faction of the population. Isn't that the definition of civil war? This isn't even foriegn terrorists attacking US troops anymore. It's native Shiite Iraqis attacking other Iraqis.
Casualties up by fifty percent, attacks up by fifteen, and yet the Pentagon is optimistic. What are we going to do in the next couple years that wasn't tried in the last couple years? What makes them think the problem is just going to go away? And what will it take for them to admit it IS a civil war?
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I mean this Administration, not one with an entirely different set of criteria. But then, I'm not entirely convinced that THIS administration has a set of criteria at all.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Ah, I see. More Republicans will speak out against the war, but I doubt this Administration will ever recognize the mess in Iraq.
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The Pentagon's response to this news is probably only 'optimistic' where and when they are required by the administration to stay chipper.
Otherwise than that, the people there are every bit as informed as we are, and often even more so; they know that things are borken frau over there.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I'm a fan of the reports of Shiite death squads removing Sunnis from hospitals, then killing them brutally. Hospitals all over Baghdad.
I would like to suggest that whatever troops we have in the country, that we are unable to protect people from being regularly removed from hospitals and taken to their deaths by groups of armed men who don't even bother hiding their intentions reflects an insufficient presence of troops.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Interesting.
