Hmm. Somehow you must find your way home? So you were still out when this post was made? Can you remember where you were or are? Because if you can, we might have cracked the infamous "I couldn't have made that post I had no access to a computer mine was broken" case!
Surge is succeding, Dims lost in time...
- Thread starter WRL
- Start date
Hmm. Somehow you must find your way home? So you were still out when this post was made? Can you remember where you were or are? Because if you can, we might have cracked the infamous "I couldn't have made that post I had no access to a computer mine was broken" case!
LOL
cawacko
Well-known member
The worst part is my sister has had four of her best friends killed by drunk drivers so I don't take it lightly. I did it tonight even though I should not have. I did feel in control enough (so I felt) otherwise I would have taken a cab.
Diuretic
New member
I wasn't getting after you. I was just letting rip with a bit of stream of semi-consciousness writing like one of my literary heroes, Jack Kerouac. I think people like Mel Gibson are fucking idiots though, all that money and won't call a cab, must be as tight as fish's arse.
Fish. Mel the Catholic.
How do I do this? Sometimes I wonder if I'm afflicted.
The Surge is working just as planned, as a temporary fix to get the president to the end of his term without a serious revolt and to give the Republican canidates a good a chance as possable.
It is, and never has been a long term fix. What do you think will happen when the "surge" troops begin to return home?
It is, and never has been a long term fix. What do you think will happen when the "surge" troops begin to return home?
From jail? I have no idea. But, if your last drunken post is any indication, I'd keep you homoerotic musings on the down low. Someone might make you their bitch.
Or we could have an uneasy partnership with their government while they teach their kids to hate the US in Madrassas, and we find that while the new government is full of people getting rich off the US, their people.... they are populating the planes for the next attack.
But heck. We already got one of those. It's called Saudi Arabia.
OK. The surge is working, but where is the political reconciliation? That was the whole point of the surge wasn't it? The mission wasn't to decrease violence as a goal in and of itself. The mission was to, well, I'll let General Petraeus of the Blessed Surge describe it:
That hasn't happened. As far I remember the Iraqi legislature has passed exactly zero progress and has recessed until December 30. I'm pleased that there is less violence (back to 2005 levels) but where is the political reconciliation?
That hasn't happened. As far I remember the Iraqi legislature has passed exactly zero progress and has recessed until December 30. I'm pleased that there is less violence (back to 2005 levels) but where is the political reconciliation?
You've been using this line for four years. It's played out dude.
I'm on record saying that Patreus in one of the only Generals who actually understands insurgencies. That you have to tread with a light foot, and not alienate the population by getting medieval on them, and razing the place to the ground. Which is what you cons were suggesting unitl recently. That said, Patreus can only put a band aid on the situation. He can only keep a lid on it. 150k american troops are not going to be able to control the whole country. Violence levels are back down to 2005 levels. That's not a reason to spike the ball in the end zone. The decrease in violence is marginally related to a US Troop buildup. The other primary reasons is that we are paying bribes to former sunni insurgents, who are only too willing and happy to take your money and guns They don't share your or Bush's agenda. The clock is ticking, and their agenda could change at anytime, in accordance with their interests, not yours. The shia militia control the south, and declared a 6 month cease fire in august. That 6 month ceasefire is about to expire.
Still dreaming. Iraq is not going to be a vibrant democracy, a beacon of hope, the lynchpin in a domino strategy. At best, its going to be a fractured, failed nation state for many years to come, dominated by sectarian strife. A nation whose majority of people will not now, and never will accept a large presence of american troops.
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blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Most Americans, many on both sides of the aisle, have already rationally and intelligently determined that nothing the Bush Administration says, or their conclusions on any facet of the war can be believed, and there exists mountains of evidence to support that. They have lied about everything about this war from the very beginning because they wanted it to happen.
If the war is going so well, why aren't republicans talking about it?
You talk about democrats living in the past .. but REPUBLICANS just had a debate and they barely mentioned Iraq. They know something you don't appear to know .. that "surge working" crap is bullshit. Are REPUBLICANS also "living in the past?"
What was happening 6 months ago and almost 5 years before that should be considered "in the past?" ... 6 months ago is the present, and the evidence you're touting is skewered and amounts to just another distortion that is dismissed by the evidence and common sense.
Start from here .. the Iraqi people hate Americans and want us out of their country because we've mass-murdered countless numbers of their own innocent citizens, including their families, and quite often their children. We've destroyed their country, historical monuments, and their vital infrastructure. They know we came as pirates for the oil.
They know, just as any sane person would know, that the US plans to remain in Iraq for a long time and we've built the largest embassy on planet earth in Iraq to prove it.
They don't want any part of our Oil Law .. I say "ours" because we wrote it and tried to force it down their throats .. and they don't want any part of our security agreement because they know it is designed to make Iraq a puppet state.
Iraq: Sunnis, Sadrists Attack U.S. Security Pact
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/12/2C4F103F-5B73-4926-827D-1A6701C35B26.html
The great failing in the "surge is working argument" is the need to consistently talk about "terrorists on the run" .. but there were no terrorists in Iraq before we invaded them, there was no Al Queda. The Iraqi people, who we are really fighting, don't like Al Queda and Al Queda has as much to fear from Iraqis as they do Americans.
"Leading Iraq experts who have advised government officials are divided about the consequences of the troop surge. Political reconciliation among Iraqi factions, always the strategic aim of the decision last January to increase U.S. combat troops, is not in sight.
Some analysts believe that the United States is merely helping warring factions arm themselves during a lull in violence that will explode again once the surge ends as planned by summer - around the time Democrats and Republicans hold their national party conventions. Others say Iraq is on the brink of a long-sought cease-fire that will allow the U.S. military to serve as a classic peacekeeping force stabilizing Iraq and the region.
Violence has receded to the levels of January 2006, before the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra set off a sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunni. By many accounts, al Qaeda in Iraq has been hammered. Sunni tribes, many of them former insurgents, have turned against al Qaeda in Iraq in what is called the Sunni awakening.
---
"The original logic for the surge clearly hasn't worked the way it was intended or planned," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
Vali Nasr, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and leading Middle East expert, contends that Petraeus has traded the goal of a united Iraq for a temporary calm, without acknowledgement by the administration.
"Gen. Petraeus, despite all his appearances, has completely gone off script with Washington," Nasr said. "He is not following a course that is based on a nonsectarian, united government in Baghdad. He is creating Sunni militias here, Shia militias there. He's cutting deals locally, which in the short run may benefit the security issue, but in the long run is going to, in fact, divide this country much further."
Nasr agreed with Biddle that the lull in the fighting will end if U.S. forces start to leave, "because Iraq is not a functioning country. Its fundamental political issues have not been solved. Everybody has guns and mutually exclusive agendas that still have to be sorted out, and the minute we get out of the middle, there has to still be a fight for the future of their country, which will be joined."
U.S. aid to militias it once condemned but now calls "concerned local citizens," may tamp down violence now but "in the long run will make a civil war far more vicious and bloody, because they will be much better armed," Nasr said.
"The first order of business is that Americans have to have an honest discussion about what are they doing in Iraq politically," Nasr said. "There's too much obsession in this country with what the U.S. military is doing and with the number of casualties. That's a very, very narrow way of looking at Iraq.
"The far more important question is what are we doing there. The administration had a claim that it was able to create a unified, stable, democratic, nonsectarian Iraq. Is it still doing that? If it is not, then what is really our game plan here, other than just finding a way to reduce numbers?"
"It is very dangerous to destroy one insurgency, al Qaeda in Iraq, by allowing another insurgency to arm and organize itself," White said.
The quiet in Baghdad now, he contends, is the result of U.S. forces sitting on neighborhoods and separating factions. As U.S. forces withdraw from newly stabilized Sunni areas, it will leave them under the control of armed Sunni groups. "If these elements come into contact with the largely Shia and Kurdish Iraqi army, or with Shia militias, there's going to be bloodshed," White said.
Bruce Reidel, a former Central Intelligence Agency veteran who served in Bush's National Security Agency, said the United States is "in the paradoxical situation where we are now arming and funding all of the major Iraqi warring parties, the Sunnis, the Shias and the Kurds. They are all happy to take our weapons and our money but they've not necessarily bought onto the same strategy as we have."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/12/02/MNOJTM0R2.DTL&tsp=1
My point is that the surge is not working. US deaths are down but Iraq is no closer to becoming a functioning state then it was before the surge, and the Maliki puppet government is not any less disrespected and dysfuntional than it was before the surge.
And THAT is why even REPUBLICANS running for president don't mention Iraq and they don't mention Bush.
That ain't the past, that is the present.
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WRL
Well...the right is right
Iraq is no Kingdom, it's a democratic state, apples and oranges...
WRL
Well...the right is right
Even in the absence if actual WMDs, those who combed through the remains of Saddam’s regime in Iraq have already turned up incontrovertible evidence of intent. Dr. David Kay, the chief arms investigator, reported results to congress, he found:
1.) A clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment for continuing chemical and Biological weapons research.
2.) A prison laboratory complex used in human testing of BW agents, which Iraqi officials were explicitly order not to report to the UN.
3.) New research on BW-applicable agents, Burcella and Congo Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin, which were not declared to the UN and done in secret.
4.) Documents and equipment, hidden in scientist’s homes that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.
5.) Reference strains used to produce biological weapons concealed in a scientist’s home
6.) A line of UAV’s undeclared and that tested way out of range, with weapons delivering abilities.
7.) Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, and Iraqi scientist’s admission of concealment from the UN.
8.) Plans and designs for long range missilery with ranges of up to 1000 km, well beyond the imposed UN limits
9.) Clandestine attempts at obtaining long range missilery from the N. Korean’s.
Any way you slice it, there’s no denying Saddam’s intent- not only to develop prohibited weaponry, but to destroy all traces of any weapon. “In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts” Dr. Kay told Congress,
“We have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documents and computers evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html
Bin Laden aided a group of Islamist extremists operating in Kurdistan. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that
the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam
-911 Commission Final Report 7/22/04
With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officers in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995… the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.
-911 Commission Final Report 7/22/04
On November 4, 1998, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of Bin Ladin. The indictment added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”109
-911 Commission Final Report 7/22/04
"Does [America] realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross to countries and cities?"
Saddam Hussein, September 29, 1994
"[O]ur striking arm will reach [America, Britain and Saudi Arabia] before they know what hit them."
Al-Qadisiyah, October 6, 1994 (State-controlled newspaper)
"One chemical weapon fired in a moment of despair could cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands." Al-Quds al-Arabi, October 12, 1994 (State-controlled newspaper)
Khobar Towers Bombing, June 25, 1996
"[The U.S.] should send more coffins to Saudi Arabia, because no one can guess what the future has in store."
Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Radio, June 27, 1996
U.S.S. Cole Bombing, October 12, 2000
"[Iraqis] should intensify struggle and jihad in all fields and by all means..."
Iraq TV, October 22, 2000 (State-controlled)
The Attacks of September 11
"The United States reaps the thorns its rulers have planted in the world."
Saddam Hussein, September 12, 2001
"The real perpetrators [of September 11] are within the collapsed buildings."
Alif-Ba, September 11, 2002 (State-controlled newspaper)
"[September 11 was] God's punishment."
Al-Iktisadi, September 11, 2002 (State-controlled newspaper)
"If the attacks of September 11 cost the lives of 3,000 civilians, how much will the size of losses in 50 states within 100 cities if it were attacked in the same way in which New York and Washington were? What would happen if hundreds of planes attacked American cities?"
Al-Rafidayn, September 11, 2002 (State-controlled newspaper)
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/iraq/sadquots.htm
WRL
Well...the right is right
Has Iraq sponsored terrorism?
Yes. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship provided headquarters, operating bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam commissioned several failed terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities. The State Department has listed Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism through both Democrat and Republican administrations.
http://cfrterrorism.org/sponsors/iraq.html
Has Iraq ever used weapons of mass destruction?
Yes. In the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi troops repeatedly used poison gas, including mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin, against Iranian soldiers, and dropping mustard-gas bombs on Iranian villages. Human Rights Watch reports that Iraq frequently used nerve agents and mustard gas against Iraqi Kurds living in the country’s north. In March 1988, Saddam’s forces killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja with chemical weapons.
(Warning very graphic)
http://www.firethistime.org/halabjavictims.jpg
http://www.iraqdigest.com/Halabja-.jpg
Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps, and soldiers of the 7th Marine Regiment destroyed a suspected terrorist camp early Sunday en route to Baghdad.
It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils.
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock040703.asp
Saddam Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. His safe place to fall back to was Iraq, were he set up camp afterwards.
Saddam’s forces killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilian Kurds in the town of Halabja with chemical weapons, men women and children littered the streets dead were they stood when the bombs fell.
http://www.barzan.com/hal66.jpg
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect5.html
Yes. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship provided headquarters, operating bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam commissioned several failed terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities. The State Department has listed Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism through both Democrat and Republican administrations.
http://cfrterrorism.org/sponsors/iraq.html
Has Iraq ever used weapons of mass destruction?
Yes. In the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi troops repeatedly used poison gas, including mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin, against Iranian soldiers, and dropping mustard-gas bombs on Iranian villages. Human Rights Watch reports that Iraq frequently used nerve agents and mustard gas against Iraqi Kurds living in the country’s north. In March 1988, Saddam’s forces killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja with chemical weapons.
(Warning very graphic)
http://www.firethistime.org/halabjavictims.jpg
http://www.iraqdigest.com/Halabja-.jpg
Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps, and soldiers of the 7th Marine Regiment destroyed a suspected terrorist camp early Sunday en route to Baghdad.
It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils.
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock040703.asp
Saddam Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. His safe place to fall back to was Iraq, were he set up camp afterwards.
Saddam’s forces killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilian Kurds in the town of Halabja with chemical weapons, men women and children littered the streets dead were they stood when the bombs fell.
http://www.barzan.com/hal66.jpg
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect5.html