Cleaning up after a car bomb
Great! It looks like we’re getting an AG who doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture (despite it having been considered so in the past by the US), we’re not condemning Musharraf‘s dictatorly actions, and now it’s possible the Iraqi Surge’s main success was in ethnic cleansing. It sure is comforting that US policy is a shining beacon to the rest of the world grounded as it is in human and democratic rights!
The dark side of Iraq’s good news
A new set of data from Iraq shows Iraqi civilian deaths on the decline, from 2,800 in January 2007 to about 800 last month. Other reports reveal that tens of thousands of Iraqis have joined local auxiliary forces to secure their neighborhoods and that U.S. forces continue to kill or capture many of the insurgency’s top leaders. Violence is down sharply in most areas. In Baghdad, troops report weeks without a roadside bomb in neighborhoods that used to be hit every day; and in Anbar, things are so good the Marines held a 5K race on the streets of Ramadi two weeks ago.
Still, the truth behind these numbers is elusive. It’s near impossible to discern whether they reflect the success of our military operations or some larger, deeper trends in Iraqi society, such as the success of the Shiite campaign to rid Baghdad of its Sunni residents. The situation does present a paradox, however. If the surge is the reason, as the generals claim, we’re in trouble, because the surge is about to end. If Iraqi reconciliation and ethnic cleansing get primary credit, and the surge is mostly acting as a catalyst, our inevitable drawdown over the next six months to pre-surge levels may not be catastrophic, because the positive trends result more from Iraqi societal shifts and less from American soldiers brokering the peace.
It would be unseemly for Lt. Gen. Odierno to claim credit for ethnic cleansing, or to find a silver lining in the deaths of thousands of Sunnis, but this is the unavoidable, if unspoken, truth about the decline of violence in Baghdad.
18,
THEN why did we go there, IF NOT to help the people??
for OIL?
Because someone SAID there were WMD’s
Because he killed 1000 people is a Mass killing? That pissed off the Sunni?
WHY??
31 / ECA
your mighty war machine rolled over arabs to help people of Israel feel safer, not to help people of Iraq to get rid of tyranny half of them supported wholeheartedly anyways.
#28, Joshua,
… I won’t be making up reasons why things have been changing to cover my ass.
Whoa, you are changing your normal way of posting ??? Holy Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick !!! The Haldol must be working.
#29, Joshua,
And where in the hell are all these anti-semites coming from????
Oopps, maybe the Haldol isn’t working.
#30, Joshua,
See my response for #29.
How is that whole Iraq thing going for you guys anyway?
theres nothing wrong with ethnic cleansing – as long as you’re not on the recieving end of it…
According to Stephen Colbert, race and skin are similar, but skin cleansing is good and race cleansing is bad.
#28 – OFTLO….not all Democrats are hoping for a loss on our part,
My point is that none of them are…
Our nation has serious problems.
Not everyone on the right is a problem. But everyone who is a problem is on the right.
#26 – – are you retarded? What you dont understand here?
He knew exactly what he was doing and why.
For details of “why” you should write to Knesseth, Jerusalem, Israel.
It isn’t what I don’t understand… it’s what shit are you shoveling? Iraq was a broken nation with all the military might of a civil war reenactment weekend… And Isreal is a bad ass muther fucker that has beaten the unholy crap out of Arab aggressors for half a century…
Meanwhile, the guys who attacked America remain unpunished and free to operate with no credible attempt to bring them to justice…
What the fuck don’t you understand? Those of us who oppose this war and this corrupt administration aren’t doing it because we dream of flowers and sunshine and little Arab children playing with little American children… We do it because we want Bin Laden’s head on a stick and no one in the White House cares about that… They are simply funneling tax dollars to Haliburton and Blackwater while drawing up plans to put the Bush Presidential Library in Dubai, Saudi Arabia.
Almost 500 billion wasted, not to mention the lives of American soldiers sacrificed to the Bush/Cheney retirement fund, and on top of unavenged I have to also feel fleeced…
No Democrats? Here’s a member of the Democrat leadership:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlr3gG8q0nw
#38 – Huh?
I saw a guy ask a question, but only the first sentence of an answer. What the hell was the answer?
I stand by my statement until you produce something that isn’t edited to say something it probably doesn’t. I mean, I know you think I’m dumb, but just how dumb do you imagine I am?
You can look up the transcript if you want, but it’s pretty obvious from the video. The Democrats want out of Iraq, and a positive report from Petraeus would be a real big problem for us. He’s putting the Democrats’ political agenda ahead of success in Iraq.
As I’m too lazy and Tim Kreider has covered the whole Iraq thing pretty well in his “The Pain – When will it end?” online comic, I’m going to indulge in a little cut-n-paste fair use from his next to most recent comic’s artist’s statement.
http://www.thepaincomics.com/
Still, it is worth saying told you so and fuck you once more to every single shithead who hopped on board the let’s-all-invade-Iraq bandwagon four years ago. It’s unsportsmanlike of me, but I’m afraid I am just disinclined to let this one go. I will refer readers, once again, to the peerless Matt Taibbi, who pointed out in his column a year ago that it’s too easy to blame the Republicans for the war in Iraq; the real responsibility lies with “the malleable middle of the American political establishment who three years ago made a conscious moral choice to support a military action that even a three year-old could have seen made no fucking sense at all.” I almost have to respect those few delusional fools—now almost exclusively limited to members of the Bush administration–who still adamantly support the war more than the millions who were enthusiastic about it until they realized it wasn’t going so well. (As Taibbi says, at least Bush and his administration sacrificed American lives for something they wrongly believed in—the rest of the political establishment was willing to forfeit those lives for the sake of expediency.) Almost. But no, not quite—at least those people are able to accept reality, albeit belatedly, about four years after it was obvious to their historically literate compatriots—just as they’re finally coming around to accept the reality of global warming about twenty years after the even smaller scientifically literate community.
The Iraq situation’s gotten a little weird, hasn’t it? I mean, in the sense that it now feels almost normal. The day before yesterday there was a photo of a line of smiling Iraqi police trainees lined up for lunch; the next day’s headline was: “28 Iraqi Police Killed in Suicide Blast.” (One imagines it being the exact same guys.) This stuff still makes headlines, but you wouldn’t exactly call it news anymore. I remember how, after the government went ahead and invaded Iraq over the protests of half the population, most of the people I know mentally washed their hands of the whole mess and quietly seceded from the rest of the nation. Our policy was: Good luck with that, guys. Let us know how it turns out. Then we finally elected a Democratic congress, but I already can’t remember what they pretended to do about it—talked about cutting off funding except then didn’t, maybe issued one of their dreaded non-binding resolutions. In other words, nothing. Since we tried that and nothing changed, we’ve apparently decided to ignore it. Babies who are abandoned at first scream their lungs out for a while, but then, after that doesn’t work, they lapse into terrible silence and passivity. It’s almost as if, since it now seems like the war’s never going to end no matter what we do, we’ve all just decided to end it in our heads, pretend it’s not happening and get on with life as usual: the ‘08 Presidential campaign, the World Series, the Britney fiasco. It’s not just the gung-ho fuckwits who supported it who are trying to forget about it now; so are those of us who passionately opposed it. It’s just too big a bummer to acknowledge anymore—except, of course, for the guys coming home mutilated and maimed, who pretty much have no choice.
Yeah, I know it’s a bigass tragedy, and we’re not supposed to dwell on how we got there or point fingers or play the Blame Game now because we’re all in it together and we have to figure out where to go from here—but actually, no, fuck that: we’re not all in it together. Those neocon pinheads from the Project for a New American Century thought up this war, the Republican party followed the administration in docile goosestep, and the shithead voters supported it with bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons and their children’s lives, like they always do, every single time, and of course it’s a fucking disaster, exactly like us wussy liberal peaceniks said it would be. Things did not go unexpectedly, inexplicably wrong in Iraq; they went predictably, inevitably wrong. Conservatives have had absolute control over America’s destiny for the last eight years, and they finally got everything they ever wanted. It’s a big grisly Monkey’s Paw wish come true for Red America. And unfortunately, unlike the horrified parents in “The Monkey’s Paw,” who can hear their mangled son’s corpse shambling toward the door, coming home, they’re out of wishes.
#33…Mr. Confusion…..your back. Did they give you your computor privledges back at the Sunny Hill Farm Home for Whacked Out Leftist’s?
#37…OFTLO…..publically staing that we have *already lost* the war in Iraq is the same as hoping we have. I don’t think they meant to wish harm on the troops, but their statements are the same as aiding and abetting our troops enemy’s.
The only way I can see the war with Iraq, is as a GIANT cover up..
To HIDE all the money LOST, and ADD to the amounts, given to Corps over the years.
to hide GROSS amounts of petty cash, that has Swamped the Pork Barrel of spending.
this is almost as bad as Purposely bankrupting the nation and handing the CASH direct to the corps.
Most of the monies being SPENT arent going to the military. If we Gave our MEN this amount of money to BE in Iraq, we would have LINES waiting to get in…
The problem we have, is that it will take 10-40 years to get threw all the BOOK work, of WHAT went WHERE, and all those responsible will be DEAD or the Corps GONE in the wind.
WE PAID for the military materials int he previous years, THEN we paid AGAIN because MOSt of it wasnt MADE at the time, and was HELD by the corps(supposedly), THEN we paid again, when the stuff got THERE, and WASNT what was contracted…