[lotuseclat79]

Article (page 1 of 2) here.

The surge motive is inspired by none other than Henry Kissinger's Vietnam exit strategy, and the object is to blame the war's loss on the Democrats in the next presidential election.

Bushie continues to use the word "victory" because he believes that's a word the American public understands, though no one in the Administration believes it is still possible.

-- Tom

 

[poochee]

IMO, people are smarter than Bush thinks. We don't care about his win, we care about our people in the middle of a losing war in a country involved in a civil war. This is his baby! Thank God for the news media, whether or not they are 100% accurate, we are an informed people.

 

[WarC]

We are informed? I have heard nothing of substance concerning the status and strategy of the war for several years.

Almost everyone outside of the military or military-reporting websites have nothing of value to add about the discussion of the war. All these people saying that more troops is a lost cause are basing that entirely on political belief, not any real knowledge of what is going on over there or how those troops would be utilized. They simply gather the evidence that supports their pre-defined position.

What is the guideline for victory, anyways? I've heard many people say this war is lost, yet Saddam was defeated and an Iraqi government is in place.

No, we are not concerned about the reality of the situation in Iraq. We are concerned about our own political ideology and how we can bend this war to fit our agendas, whether we're talking about Republicans or Democrats.

In that way only is this war only "Bush's baby". That much is true. His administration seems to be the only people who really want to see this elusive and ill-defined "victory" in the first place.

I don't mean to sound all agro on you personally poochee, I am just expressing some of the frustration I feel about how politicized this war is. It was doomed from the start.

 

[poochee]

We are informed? I have heard nothing of substance concerning the status and strategy of the war for several years.

Almost everyone outside of the military or military-reporting websites have nothing of value to add about the discussion of the war. All these people saying that more troops is a lost cause are basing that entirely on political belief, not any real knowledge of what is going on over there or how those troops would be utilized. They simply gather the evidence that supports their pre-defined position.

What is the guideline for victory, anyways? I've heard many people say this war is lost, yet Saddam was defeated and an Iraqi government is in place.

No, we are not concerned about the reality of the situation in Iraq. We are concerned about our own political ideology and how we can bend this war to fit our agendas, whether we're talking about Republicans or Democrats.

In that way only is this war only "Bush's baby". That much is true. His administration seems to be the only people who really want to see this elusive and ill-defined "victory" in the first place.

I don't mean to sound all agro on you personally poochee, I am just expressing some of the frustration I feel about how politicized this war is. It was doomed from the start.

Unfortunately, we are all frustrated. Just different points of view.

 

[bill.aam]

IMO, people are smarter than Bush thinks. We don't care about his win, we care about our people in the middle of a losing war in a country involved in a civil war. This is his baby! Thank God for the news media, whether or not they are 100% accurate, we are an informed people.

But I guess I shouldn't be shocked, looking at who said it...

 

[lotuseclat79]

Hi poochee,

Its all about oil, the very foundation of our economy. If only we can be smart enough to impeach Bushie before the end of his term, I would be a real happy camper then. I can't wait until the neo-cons are banished from our government - what a God-awful infuence they have been on a POTUS who has only enough vision to suit the ideology of a lost cause.

-- Tom


-- Tom

 

[linskyjack]

We are informed? I have heard nothing of substance concerning the status and strategy of the war for several years.

Almost everyone outside of the military or military-reporting websites have nothing of value to add about the discussion of the war. All these people saying that more troops is a lost cause are basing that entirely on political belief, not any real knowledge of what is going on over there or how those troops would be utilized. They simply gather the evidence that supports their pre-defined position.

What is the guideline for victory, anyways? I've heard many people say this war is lost, yet Saddam was defeated and an Iraqi government is in place.

No, we are not concerned about the reality of the situation in Iraq. We are concerned about our own political ideology and how we can bend this war to fit our agendas, whether we're talking about Republicans or Democrats.

In that way only is this war only "Bush's baby". That much is true. His administration seems to be the only people who really want to see this elusive and ill-defined "victory" in the first place.

I don't mean to sound all agro on you personally poochee, I am just expressing some of the frustration I feel about how politicized this war is. It was doomed from the start.

Actually, you have it wrong. People within the media and on the other side of the aisle have been questioning the troop levels from six months into the war until today. A great general was fired by Cheney and Rumsfeld because he had the nerve to tell them that before they invaded Iraq, that they would need 300,000-400,000 more boots on the ground. After close to four years, the President decides that it is time to put 20,000 troops on the ground! Don't you see the disconnect here?

 

[Littlefield]

Yep ,and Mccain can say I told you so

 

[iltos]

Actually, you have it wrong. People within the media and on the other side of the aisle have been questioning the troop levels from six months into the war until today. A great general was fired by Cheney and Rumsfeld because he had the nerve to tell them that before they invaded Iraq, that they would need 300,000-400,000 more boots on the ground. After close to four years, the President decides that it is time to put 20,000 troops on the ground! Don't you see the disconnect here?

my conjecture is that, this time round, there WAS talk of a whole lot more

and that the 20,000 figure was arrived at for some political reason, a wierd balance between: an acceptable level of loyalty, illusion, determination, and "bring it on"....and the public's tolerance for acceptable losses to maintain that illusion

 

[ekim68]

Promising Troops Where They Aren’t Really Wanted

BAGHDAD, Jan. 10 — As President Bush challenges public opinion at home by committing more American troops, he is confronted by a paradox: an Iraqi government that does not really want them.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has not publicly opposed the American troop increase, but aides to Mr. Maliki have been saying for weeks that the government is wary of the proposal. They fear that an increased American troop presence, particularly in Baghdad, will be accompanied by a more assertive American role that will conflict with the Shiite government’s haste to cut back on American authority and run the war the way it wants. American troops, Shiite leaders say, should stay out of Shiite neighborhoods and focus on fighting Sunni insurgents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?pagewanted=print

 

[Fidelista]

So now we begin to agree with Iraqis. Approx 70 % of Iraqis want us out or killed --and 70 % of Americans are not buying Bush "surge" adventures. Maybe it doesnt mean anything --reality, but should it not a be consideration ??????. . >f

Poll: Americans oppose Iraq troop surge
WASHINGTON - Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to
Iraq, according to a new poll that provides a devastatingly blunt response to President Bush's plan to bolster military forces there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070111/ap_on_re_us/iraq_ap_poll

 

[plschwartz]

my conjecture is that, this time round, there WAS talk of a whole lot more

and that the 20,000 figure was arrived at for some political reason, a wierd balance between: an acceptable level of loyalty, illusion, determination, and "bring it on"....and the public's tolerance for acceptable losses to maintain that illusion

I believe that was all they could scrap up. It includes our strategic reserve and includes WITHDRAWING some troops from afghanistan to serve in Iraq

 

[plschwartz]

Surge towards debacle in Iraq and MidEast

Published: January 11 2007 18:18 | Last updated: January 11 2007 18:18

George W. Bush’s new direction in Iraq is certainly not a strategy for victory, whatever that word, which is used ever more desperately by the US president, now means. It may be one last heave. It may be a cover for US withdrawal. But two things are quite clear.

Right now, Mr Bush has the support of no more than one in four Americans for this so-called surge of an extra 20,000 or so troops. Very soon, as the already indecipherable ethnic and sectarian patchwork of Iraq is pulled further and even more bloodily to pieces, he will have none.

Second, this policy will not succeed in fixing an Iraq traumatised by tyranny and war and then broken by invasion and occupation. But it may end with the US “surging” into Iran – and taking the Middle East to a new level of mayhem that will spill into nearby regions and western capitals.

Mr Bush’s body language in the speech bespoke a chastened man. Yet, caught in a wilfully spun web of delusion and denial, he seems still unable to comprehend the depths of the debacle he has caused in Iraq.

Iraq has reached advanced societal breakdown, with ethnic cleansing on a regional, neighbourhood and even street-by-street basis. There has been a mass exodus of its professionals and managers, civil servants and entrepreneurs, a haemorrhage of its future. The time for the occupying authorities to have surged was 2003, after the fall of Baghdad; like everything they have tried since, this is far too little, much too late. The US deployed a similar number of troops last summer to “lock down” Baghdad, since when the number of killed in the capital alone has rocketed to more than 100 a day, while on average an attack occurs against Anglo-American forces every 10 minutes, and this in a fight now mainly between the minority Sunni deposed from power and the hitherto dispossessed Shia majority drunk with it.

It is hard, even for ardent democrats, to see this Iraq as a young democracy fighting for its life, as Mr Bush’s discourse of good guys against bad guys would have it. The invasion has solidified a system divided into sects and operating on the basis of patronage and intimidation. The composition of parliament is nearly two thirds Islamist. There are no institutions. Ministries are sectarian booty and factional bastions. The one institution that did more or less survive Saddam Hussein, the national army, was disbanded by the occupation and current attempts to reconstitute it have failed to move beyond rebadged militia. The three brigades the Shia-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki has promised to add to the five extra US brigades are mostly Peshmerga – Kurdish militiamen – adding another account to be settled once the Americans withdraw.

What is still, in spite of Mr Bush’s attempts to dress it up, an essentially military strategy is just not credible. The US army is not designed to deal with insurgency and, in any case, does not have the troops to master one on this scale – especially if its own masters are planning to open a new front.

It has failed to control the insurgency in the Sunni triangle – a rebellion by a minority of the minority. Now it aims to confront Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia radical, and his 60,000-strong Mahdi army, in a fight that could set fire to east Baghdad and south Iraq, where British troops could easily be enveloped in the flames.

The contradiction at the heart of the US approach, however, is this: after casually overturning the Sunni order in Iraq and empowering the Shia in an Arab heartland country for the first time in nearly a millennium, Washington took fright at the way this had enlarged the power of the Shia Islamist regime in Iran. Now, while dependent on Tehran-aligned forces in Baghdad, and unable to dismantle the Sunni Jihadistan it has created in western Iraq, the US is trying to put together an Arab Sunni alliance against Iran. This is a fiasco with the fuel to combust into a region-wide conflagration....

Financial Times

 

[poochee]

Poll: Americans oppose Iraq troop surgeBy NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer
Last Updated 5:46 pm PST Thursday, January 11, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq, according to a new poll that provides a devastatingly blunt response to President Bush's plan to bolster military forces there.

All sides in the Iraq debate are keenly aware of mounting public dissatisfaction with the situation: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday it's one thing on which all Americans - including administration officials - are united.

Yet the Associated Press-Ipsos poll found widespread disagreement with the Bush administration over its proposed solution, and growing skepticism that the United States made the right decision in going to war in the first place.

Just as 70 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq, a like number don't think such an increase would help stabilize the situation there, the poll suggested. When asked to name the most important problem facing the U.S., 38 percent of those polled volunteered war, up significantly from 24 percent three months ago.

The AP-Ipsos telephone survey of 1,002 adults was conducted Monday through Wednesday night, when the president made his speech calling for an increase in troops. News had already surfaced before the polling period that Bush planned to boost U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public's concern over Iraq was a prominent topic on Capitol Hill on Thursday as legislators reacted to the president's plan to increase troop levels by 21,500.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., harked back to the Vietnam War as he warned Rice that any solution to the Iraq problem must have public support. "They've got to sign on," he told her.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told Rice: "You are not listening to the American people. ... And you wonder why there is a dark cloud of skepticism and pessimism over this nation."

But Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said it would be an oversimplification to think that people just want the United States out of Iraq.

"They're understandably frustrated, they're understandably saddened," he said. "But if you can show the American people that there is a way forward to success, and also describe to them the consequences of failure, I believe this policy can be supported."

Iraq is a drag on Bush's overall job approval rating, too. That rating is at 32 percent in the latest survey, a new low in AP-Ipsos polling.

Just 35 percent of Americans think it was right for the United States to go to war, another record low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move. Sixty percent, meanwhile, think it is unlikely that a stable, democratic Iraqi government will be established.

Democrats are far more inclined to oppose an increase of troops, with 87 percent against the idea, compared with 42 percent of Republicans.

Rest at:
http://dwb.sacbee.com/24hour/front/story/3470169p-12693964c.html

 

[compushlep]

Haven't seen anyone mention the mercenaries in Iraq yet, apparently there are about 100,000 or more, and ~650 have been killed since 2003 ...

What is striking about the current debate in Washington - whether to "surge" troops to Iraq and increase the size of the U.S. Army - is that roughly 100,000 bodies are missing from the equation:

The number of American forces in Iraq is not 140,000, but more like 240,000.

What makes up the difference is the huge army of mercenaries - known these days as "private contractors." After the U.S. Army itself, they are easily the second-largest military force in the country. Yet no one seems sure of how many there are since they answer to no single authority. Indeed, the U.S. Central Command has only recently started taking a census of these battlefield civilians in an attempt to get a handle on the issue...

The private contractors are Americans, South Africans, Brits, Iraqis and a hodgepodge of other nationalities. Many of them are veterans of the U.S. or other armed forces and intelligence services, who are now deployed in Iraq (and Afghanistan and other countries) to perform duties normally carried out by the U.S. Army, but at salaries two or three times greater than those of American soldiers.

They work as interrogators and interpreters in American prisons; body guards for top U.S. and Iraqi officials; trainers for the Iraqi army and police; and engi-neers constructing huge new U.S. bases. They are often on the front lines. In fact, 650 of them have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion

Their salaries, are, in the end, paid directly by the U.S. government - or tacked on as huge additional "security charges" to the bills of private American or other contractors. Yet the Central Command still doesn't have a complete list of who they are or what they are up to. The final figure could be much higher than 100,000.

The U.S. Congress, under Republican control until now, knows even less.

Yet these private contractors man their own helicopters and Humvees and look and act just like American troops.

LINK 100,000 Mercenaries, the Forgotten "Surge"
Nobody's got it right on the number already there...
by Barry Lando

Maybe Bush can divert some funds to buy more troops

 

[plschwartz]

"The Bush administration is caught in a vise. Here at home they have lost public support and their Congressional allies are scurrying for cover. But overseas they have the opposite problem. All of our allies are asking us to stay in Iraq.

Arab allies have quietly put serious pressure on President Bush to remain in Iraq, fearing premature evacuation will turn the country over to Iranian-backed militia, sources said Wednesday.

"What concerns us is the instability and uncertainty in the area," Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy told the New York Daily News. "We need to stabilize the situation before the next step, otherwise it will become complete chaos."

Several other Sunni Arab nations that are valuable U.S. allies - including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, the Emirates - are concerned about Iran's influence and the growing power of Iraq's Shiite majority. The Israelis, an unlikely ally, agree.

As Iran secretly backs Shiite groups in Iraq, wealthy Saudis already have begun to finance Sunni militias in Iraq, a source privy to Israeli intelligence said.

If the U.S. were to leave, the Saudi government would likely openly finance Sunni fighters, the source said. A senior U.S. official confirmed the mostly unseen Arab pressure on Bush to stay the course in Iraq.

"There are worries about Iranian influence in Iraq and in the region. . . . The sectarian violence has deepened the division between the Shiites and the Sunnis," said Jordanian Embassy spokesman Merissa Khurma.

There are about eight degrees of irony involved in this. The idea that our most important ally, Saudi Arabia, is funding the Salafi jihadists that make up the heart of Al-Qaeda in Iraq is almost amusing in its insanity. It's also eye-opening to see Israel in agreement with their Arab neighbors about the need for America to stay the course occupying an Arab country. Meanwhile, as Juan Cole points out, the Shi'ite Prime Minister of Iraq has issued a stark warning to the Shi'ite militia of Moqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq's prime minister has told Shiite militiamen to surrender their arms or face an all-out assault by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday, as President Bush said he will commit an additional Under pressure from the U.S., Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has agreed to crack down on fighters controlled by his most powerful political ally, Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, according to officials. Previously, al-Maliki had resisted the move.

"Prime Minister al-Maliki has told everyone that there will be no escape from attack," said a senior Shiite legislator and close al-Maliki adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak for the prime minister. "The government has told the Sadrists: 'If we want to build a state we have no other choice but to attack armed groups.'"

Here is Cole's interpretation.

He is telling the Sadrists to lie low while the US mops up the Sunni Arab guerrillas. Sadr's militia became relatively quiescent for a whole year after the Marines defeated it at Najaf in August, 2004. But since it is rooted in an enormous social movement, the militia is fairly easy to reconstitute after it goes into hiding.

The **** is hitting the fan. Bush can't stay without Congressional approval and Congress is incredibly hostile to this escalation. But he can't pull out without alienating all our regional allies. And, yet, somehow we are supposed to abide two more years of this administration? "
Booman Tribune

 

[bassetman]

Another fine mess.....!

 

[compushlep]

Another fine mess.....!

That about sums it up ... although I do think Laurel and Hardy could have done a much better acting job, so comparing them to Bush is an insult to their talent!

 

[bassetman]

Dat's dem!

 

[poochee]

Another fine mess.....!

Right!