SEND REINFORCEMENTS! Only 2,000 U.S. to 1 al Qaeda in Afghanistan

Can you believe this? Does anybody remember supposedly why we invaded Afghanistan in the first place? It was to deny al Qaeda a save haven and a base of operations there.
Now experts are saying there are probably fewer than 50 and no more than 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan! In fact, they're not there at all, they're in western Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Obama gave McChrystal most of what he wanted, with almost 98,000 troops on the ground, more than Dubya ever sent.
So, now we have a maximum ratio of almost 2,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for every 1 member of al Qaeda there; and a minimum of about 1,000 to 1.
You know, that sounds like enough troops to do the job. In fact, that sounds like way too many troops to do the job. No more al Qaeda in Afghanistan even kind of sounds like, well, "Mission Accomplished," doesn't it? I mean, put this in perspective: we can't restrict the flow of millions of Mexicans into the U.S., but we've managed to root out all but 50 al Qaeda from a country that's not even ours, with a border that nobody controls. I say it's time to pat each other on the back, give ourselves a laurel and a hearty handshake and say, "See ya, Afghanistan!" Let's bring our victorious troops home to a big hoopla parade! Whoopee! WE WON!!!!

What?... nobody else is excited? Nobody does an endzone dance anymore? What's wrong with you people?

Yeah, well, the truth, as we all know -- what neither Obama nor Dubya will admit -- is that we are not at war; we are an occupier stuck doing nation-building in Afghanistan. Our happenstance enemy there is the Taliban, who never threatened or attacked the United States until we invaded their country and took them out of power. To keep them out of power, we have to simultaneously (1) provide security against their harsh rule and retribution against cooperating Afghans, and (2) give the people "government in a box," as McChrystal put it, so that they don't look to said Taliban to provide freedom from chaos. Only thing is, that box with shiny wrapping and a pretty bow on top is empty. There's no such thing as government in a box. And even if there were, we've chosen the hardest place on earth to start a new government: a primitive, forbidding, uneducated, dirt poor, xenophobic, heavily armed, devoutly Islamic population with no history of democracy, power-to-the-people or rational civilized discourse. These are backward village idiots and crazy goat herders of the highest order. (No disrespect intended: all 3 major religions originated with such folk; so if God loves them so should we.)

Our task there is akin to convincing the majority of rural Mississipians or Alabamans -- by giving them the equivalent of 2-3x their average income in cash and in-kind -- to become slick, multicultural, gentrified, fast-talking New Yorkers and never revert to their poor, redneck ways once our support ends. They've tried this on Wife Swap a hundred times already and it's never worked.


Leon Panetta: There May Be Less Than 50 Al Qaeda Fighters In Afghanistan
June 27, 2010 | AP/Huffington Post
URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/27/leon-panetta-there-may-be_n_627012.html

Taliban, warlords resurgent in Afghanistan

The opportunity cost of the 'surge' in Iraq is a dire lack of troops to fight the resurgent Taliban, and now, tribal warlords in Afghanistan.


Afghan Warlords, Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn Their Guns on U.S. Troops
By Anna Mulrine
July 11, 2008 | U.S. News & World Report

[Excerpt:]

'U.S. forces are keenly aware that they are facing an increasingly complex enemy here—what U.S. military officials now call a syndicate—composed not only of Taliban fighters but also powerful warlords who were once on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency. "You could almost describe the insurgency as having two branches," says a senior U.S. military official here. "It's the Taliban in the south and a 'rainbow coalition' in the east."'

'But though the Hekmatyar and Haqqani networks have loose alliances and similar goals, each has its own turf. "They are swimming in the same stream, but they are not unified. There is no Ho Chi Minh," says the U.S. military official. "They have the same broad generic approaches, and it works. The bottom line is that if your only mission is to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, you don't have to be coordinated—and what they're doing is plenty good enough to stir up problems in this country."

'In the course of conducting these operations, insurgents have benefited greatly from the shortage of U.S. and allied troops here, say U.S. officials. Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he is "deeply troubled" by the increasing violence in Afghanistan but emphasized that troop levels in Iraq precluded a further increase in forces. "We need more troops there," he said in Washington. "But I don't have the troops I can reach for."'

Scott Ritter: Iraq's Tragic Future

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, makes some forceful claims about Iraq to-date, & provocative predictions about Iraq in 2008. I don't know if he's right; but I certainly can't prove he's wrong. This is definitely worth a (sobering) read.


Iraq's Tragic Future
By Scott Ritter
February 5, 2008 | Truthdig.com

Any analysis of the current state of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq that relied solely on the U.S. government, the major candidates for president or the major media outlets in the United States for information would be hard pressed to find any bad news. In a State of the Union address which had everything except a "Mission Accomplished" banner flying in the background, President Bush all but declared victory over the insurgency in Iraq. His recertification of the success of the so-called surge has prompted the Republican candidates to assume a cocky swagger when discussing Iraq. They embrace the occupation and speak, without shame or apparent fear of retribution, of an ongoing presence in that war-torn nation. Their Democratic counterparts have been less than enthusiastic in their criticism of the escalation. And the media, for the most part, continue their macabre role as cheerleaders of death, hiding the reality of Iraq deep inside stories that build upon approving headlines derived from nothing more than political rhetoric. The war in Iraq, we're told, is virtually over. We only need "stay the course" for 10 more years.

This situation is troublesome in the extreme. The collective refusal of any constituent in this complicated mix of political players to confront Bush on Iraq virtually guarantees that it will be the Bush administration, and not its successor, that will dictate the first year (or more) of policy in Iraq for the next president. It also ensures that the debacle that is the Bush administration's overarching Middle East policy of regional transformation and regime change in not only Iraq but Iran and Syria will continue to go unchallenged. If the president is free to pursue his policies, it could lead to direct military intervention in Iran by the United States prior to President Bush's departure from office or, failing that, place his successor on the path toward military confrontation. At a time when every data point available certifies (and recertifies) the administration's actions in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere (including Afghanistan) as an abject failure, America collectively has fallen into a hypnotic trance, distracted by domestic economic problems and incapable, due to our collective ignorance of the world we live in, of deciphering the reality on the ground in the Middle East.

Rather than offering a word-for-word renouncement of the president's rosy assertions concerning Iraq, I will instead initiate a process of debunking the myth of American success by doing that which no politician, current or aspiring, would dare do: predict the failure of American policy in Iraq. With the ink on the newspapers parroting the president's words barely dry, evidence of his misrepresentation of reality begins to build with the announcement by the Pentagon that troop levels in Iraq will not be dropping, as had been projected in view of the "success" of the "surge," but rather holding at current levels with the possibility of increasing in the future. [Ritter's claim here is news to me. I searched for an article confirming his claim, but I couldn't find any Pentagon "announcement," only rumors. If somebody can confirm it, please share it with me! -- J] This reversal of course concerning troop deployments into Iraq highlights the reality that the statistical justification of "surge success," namely the reduction in the level of violence, was illusory, a temporary lull brought about more by smoke and mirrors than any genuine change of fortune on the ground. Even the word surge is inappropriate for what is now undeniably an escalation. Iraq, far from being a nation on the rebound, remains a mortally wounded shell, the equivalent of a human suffering from a sucking chest wound, its lungs collapsed and its life blood spilling unchecked onto the ground. The "surge" never addressed the underlying reasons for Iraq's post-Saddam suffering, and as such never sought to heal that which was killing Iraq. Instead, the "surge" offered little more than a cosmetic gesture, covering the wounds of Iraq with a bandage which shielded the true extent of the damage from outside view while doing nothing to save the victim.

Iraq is dying; soon Iraq will be dead. True, there will be a plot of land in the Middle East which people will refer to as Iraq. But any hope of a resurrected homogeneous Iraqi nation populated by a diverse people capable of coexisting in peace and harmony is soon to be swept away forever. Any hope of a way out for the people of Iraq and their neighbors is about to become a victim of the "successes" of the "surge" and the denial of reality. The destruction of Iraq has already begun. The myth of Kurdish stability—born artificially out of the U.S.-enforced "no-fly zones" of the 1990s, sustained through the largess of the Oil-for-Food program (and U.S.-approved sanctions sidestepped by the various Kurdish groups in Iraq) and given a Frankenstein-like lease on life in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion and occupation—is rapidly unraveling. Like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, present-day Iraqi Kurdistan has been exposed as an amalgam of parts incompatible not only with each other but the region as a whole.

Ongoing Kurdish disdain for the central authority in Baghdad has led to the Kurds declaring their independence from Iraqi law (especially any law pertaining to oil present on lands they control). The reality of the Kurds' quest for independence can be seen in their support of the Kurdish groups, in particular the PKK, that desire independence from Turkey. The sentiment has not been lost on their Turkish neighbors to the north, resulting in an escalation of cross-border military incursions which will only expand over time, further destabilizing Kurdish Iraq. Lying dormant, and unmentioned, is the age-old animosity between the two principle Kurdish factions in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). As recently as 1997, these two factions were engaged in a virtual civil war against one another. The strains brought on by the present unraveling have these two factions once again vying for position inside Iraq, making internecine conflict all but inevitable. The year 2008 will bring with it a major escalation of Turkish military operations against northern Iraq, a strategic break between the Kurdish factions there and with the central government of Baghdad, and the beginnings of an all-out civil war between the KDP and PUK.

The next unraveling of the "surge" myth will be in western Iraq, where the much applauded "awakening" was falling apart even as Bush spoke. I continue to maintain that there is a hidden hand behind the Sunni resistance that operates unseen and uncommented on by the United States and its erstwhile Iraqi allies operating out of the Green Zone in Baghdad. The government of Saddam Hussein never formally capitulated, and indeed had in place plans for ongoing active resistance against any occupation of Iraq. In October 2007 the Iraqi Baath Party held its 13th conference, in which it formally certified one of Saddam's vice presidents, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, as the supreme leader of the Sunni resistance.

The United States' embrace of the "awakening" will go down in the history of the Iraq conflict as one of the gravest strategic errors made in a field of grave errors. The U.S. military in Iraq has never fully understood the complex interplay between the Sunni resistance, al-Qaida in Iraq, and the former government of Saddam Hussein. Saddam may be dead, but not so his plans for resistance. The massive security organizations which held sway over Iraq during his rule were never defeated, and never formally disbanded. The organs of security which once operated as formal ministries now operate as covert cells, functioning along internal lines of communication which are virtually impenetrable by outside forces. These security organs gave birth to al-Qaida in Iraq, fostered its growth as a proxy, and used it as a means of sowing chaos and fear among the Iraqi population.

The violence perpetrated by al-Qaida in Iraq is largely responsible for the inability of the central government in Baghdad to gain any traction in the form of unified governance. The inability of the United States to defeat al-Qaida has destroyed any hope of generating confidence among the Iraqi population in the possibility of stability emerging from an ongoing American occupation. But al-Qaida in Iraq is not a physical entity which the United States can get its hands around, but rather a giant con game being run by Izzat al-Douri and the Sunni resistance. Because al-Qaida in Iraq is derived from the Sunni resistance, it can be defeated only when the Sunni resistance is defeated. And the greatest con game of them all occurred when the Sunni resistance manipulated the United States into arming it, training it and turning it against the forces of al-Qaida, which it controls. Far from subduing the Sunni resistance by Washington's political and military support of the "awakening," the United States has further empowered it. It is almost as if we were arming and training the Viet Cong on the eve of the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War.

Keeping in mind the fact that the Sunni resistance, led by al-Douri, operates from the shadows, and that its influence is exerted more indirectly than directly, there are actual al-Qaida elements in Iraq which operate independently of central Sunni control, just as there are Sunni tribal elements which freely joined the "awakening" in an effort to quash the forces of al-Qaida in Iraq. The diabolical beauty of the Sunni resistance isn't its ability to exert direct control over all aspects of the anti-American activity in Sunni Iraq, but rather to manipulate the overall direction of activity through indirect means in a manner which achieves its overall strategic aims. The Sunni resistance continues to use al-Qaida in Iraq as a useful tool for seizing the strategic focus of the American military occupiers (and their Iraqi proxies in the Green Zone), as well as controlling Sunni tribal elements which stray too far off the strategic course (witness the recent suicide bomb assassination of senior Sunni tribal leaders). 2008 will see the collapse of the Sunni "awakening" movement, and a return to large-scale anti-American insurgency in western Iraq. It will also see the continued viability of al-Qaida in Iraq in terms of being an organization capable of wreaking violence and dictating the pace of American military involvement in directions beneficial to the Sunni resistance and detrimental to the United States.

One of the spinoffs of the continued success of the Sunni resistance is the focus it places on the inability of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad to actually govern. The U.S. decision to arm, train and facilitate the various Sunni militias in Iraq is a de facto acknowledgement that the American occupiers have lost confidence in the high-profile byproduct of the "purple finger revolution" of January 2005. The sham that was that election has produced a government trusted by no one, even the Shiites. The ongoing unilateral cease-fire imposed by the Muqtada al-Sadr on his Mahdi Army prevented the outbreak of civil war between his movement and that of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and its militia, the Badr Brigade.

When Saddam's security forces dissolved on the eve of the fall of Baghdad in March 2003, the security organs which had been tasked with infiltrating the Shiite community for the purpose of spying on Shiites were instead instructed to embed themselves deep within the structures of that community. Both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade are heavily infiltrated with such sleeper elements, which conspire to create and exploit fractures between these two organizations under the age-old adage of divide and conquer. A strategic pause in the conflict between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military on the one hand and the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade on the other has served to strengthen the hand of the Mahdi Army by allowing time for it to rearm and reorganize, increasing its efficiency as a military organization all the while its political opposite, the SCIRI-dominated central Iraqi government, continues to falter.

Further exacerbating the situation for the American occupiers of Iraq is the ongoing tension created by the war of wills between the United States and Iran. The Sunni resistance has no love for the Shiite theocracy in Tehran, or its proxies in Iraq, and views creating a rift between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade as a strategic imperative on the road to a Sunni resurgence. Any U.S. military strike against Iran will bring with it the inevitable Shiite backlash in Iraq. The Shiite forces that emerge as the most independent of the American occupier will be, in the minds of the Sunni resistance, the most capable of winning the support of the Shiites of Iraq. Given the past record of cooperation between the Mahdi Army and the Sunni resistance, and the ongoing antipathy between Sunnis and SCIRI, there can be little doubt which Shiite entity the Sunnis will side with when it comes time for a decisive conflict between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, and 2008 will be the year which witnesses such a conflict.

The big loser in all of this, besides the people of Iraq, is of course the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. Betrayed by the Bush administration, abandoned by Congress and all but forgotten by a complacent American population and those who are positioning themselves for national leadership in the next administration, the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who so proudly wear the uniform of the United States continue to fight and die, kill and be maimed in a war which was never justified and long ago lost its luster. Played as pawns in a giant game of three-dimensional chess, these brave Americans find themselves being needlessly sacrificed in a game where there can be no winner, only losers.

The continued ambivalence of the American population as a whole toward the war in Iraq, perhaps best manifested by the superficiality of the slogan "Support the Troops," all the while remaining ignorant of what the troops are actually doing, has led to a similar amnesia among politicians all too willing to allow themselves to seek political advantage at the expense of American life and treasure. January 2008 cost the United States nearly 40 lives in Iraq. The current military budget is unprecedented in its size, and doesn't even come close to paying for ongoing military operations in Iraq. The war in Iraq has bankrupted Americans morally and fiscally, and yet the American public continues to shake the hands of aspiring politicians who ignore Iraq, pretending that the blood which soaks the hands of these political aspirants hasn't stained their own. In the sick kabuki dance that is American politics, this refusal to call a spade a spade is deserving of little more than disdain and sorrow.

While the American people, politicians and media may remain mute on the reality of Iraq, I won't. There is no such thing as a crystal ball which enables one to see clearly into the future, and I am normally averse to making sweeping long-term predictions involving a topic as fluid as the ongoing situation in Iraq. At the risk of being wrong (and, indeed, I hope very much that I am), I will contradict the rosy statements of the president in his State of the Union address and will throw down a gauntlet in the face of ongoing public and media ambivalence by predicting that 2008 will be the year the "surge" in Iraq is exposed as a grand debacle. The cosmetic bandage placed over the gravely wounded Iraq will fall off, and the damaged body that is Iraq will continue its painful decline toward death.

If there is any winner in all of this it will be the Sunni resistance, or at least its leadership hiding in the shadow of the American occupation, as it continues to exploit the chaotic death spiral of post-Saddam Iraq for its own long-term plan of a Sunni resurgence in Iraq. That the Sunni resistance will continue to fight an American occupation is a guarantee. That it will continue to persevere is highly probable. That the United States will be able to stop it is unlikely. And so, the reality that the only policy direction worthy of consideration here in the United States concerning Iraq is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American forces continues to hold true. And the fact that this option is given short shrift by all capable of making or influencing such a decision guarantees that this bloody war will go on, inconclusively and incomprehensibly, for many more years. That is the one image in my crystal ball that emerges in full focus, and which will serve as the basis of defining a national nightmare for generations to come.

Iraq MoD: Please stay till 2018

Folks, this is just one more sign the surge is working: Iraq's army now wants us to stay another 10 years, at least! Wow, talk about a turnaround! How can we refuse such a sincere invitation, I ask you? Damn the cost, they like us again, that's all that matters!


Minister Sees Need for U.S. Help in Iraq Until 2018
By Thom Shanker

January 15, 2008 | New York Times

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq's borders from external threat until at least 2018.

Those comments from the minister, Abdul Qadir, were among the most specific public projections of a timeline for the American commitment in Iraq by officials in either Washington or Baghdad. And they suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated.

Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir's projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

[Read that again: "even less optimistic than those he made last year." That was last year before the surge. The surge has made Iraq's defense minister less optimistic about the strength of Iraq's military! Iraq is now officially Bizarro World, folks, where up is down, black is white, and failure is success. -- J]

President Bush has never given a date for a military withdrawal from Iraq but has repeatedly said that American forces would stand down as Iraqi forces stand up. Given Mr. Qadir's assessment of Iraq's military capabilities on Monday, such a withdrawal appeared to be quite distant, and further away than any American officials have previously stated in public.

Mr. Qadir's comments are likely to become a factor in political debate over the war. All of the Democratic presidential candidates have promised a swift American withdrawal, while the leading Republican candidates have generally supported President Bush's plan. Now that rough dates have been attached to his formula, they will certainly come under scrutiny from both sides.

Senior Pentagon and military officials said Mr. Qadir had been consistent throughout his weeklong visit in pressing that timeline, and also in laying out requests for purchasing new weapons through Washington's program of foreign military sales.

"According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012 we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country," Mr. Qadir said in an interview on Monday, conducted in Arabic through an interpreter.

"In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020," he added.

He offered no specifics on a timeline for reducing the number of American troops in Iraq.

His statements were slightly less optimistic than what he told an independent United States commission examining the progress of Iraqi security forces last year, according to the September report of the commission, led by a former NATO commander, Gen. James L. Jones of the Marines, who is retired. Then Mr. Qadir said he expected that Iraq would be able to fully defend its borders by 2018.

Moving the goal posts (again) in Iraq

It's nice to hear Preble echo my argument that Bush, McCain, Lieberman, and the pro-war types have moved the goal posts once again in Iraq to declare the surge some kind of victory, when in fact it didn't achieve Bush's own stated goals and benchmarks.


Redefining Success in Iraq
By Christopher Preble
January 15, 2008 | Prospect.org

One year after President Bush announced that additional troops would be sent to Iraq, the pundits and armchair strategists are prepared to render a verdict. "The surge worked," declare Sens. McCain and Lieberman. Radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt explains that U.S. troops have delivered a decisive victory, sentiments echoed by Heritage Foundation fellow Tony Blankley. Washington Post editors ask why, in light of the clear success of the surge, so few Democrats are willing to admit that they had been wrong to oppose the escalation in the first place.

In fact, the entire narrative surrounding the surge has changed over the course of the last 12 months. As initially conceived, the surge was intended to make a space for political reconciliation among the Iraqi people that would, in the president's words, "hasten the day our troops begin coming home." But after a year in which the Iraqi government has, with the possible exception of the new agreement on de-Baathification passed over the weekend, failed to enact and implement the crucial political benchmarks spelled out when the president announced his strategy, the advocates of the surge now argue that we cannot withdraw now lest Iraq fall back into chaos.

[Which was exactly the point we were at 1 year ago: pro-war types saying the reason we couldn't leave Iraq was that it would fall into chaos. So, what has changed in a year? Nothing. -- J ]

Our "gains are thrilling but not yet permanent," McCain and Lieberman intone, and therefore, "it would be a mistake to commit ourselves preemptively" to further troop cuts. In other words, the surge strategy, marketed to the American people as a vehicle for hastening the end of the U.S. military presence in Iraq, is now being cited as a justification for keeping U.S. troops there indefinitely. Success, once synonymous with withdrawal (remember "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down"?) now means exactly the opposite.

But while such sentiments are widespread inside of the Beltway, the American public at large has proved stubbornly impervious to such talk. Strong majorities, 60 percent or more in some polls, believe that the costs of the war have already exceeded whatever benefits we might derive from it, and they are therefore unlikely to embrace an indefinite military presence that will cost far more. Further evidence that the public's appetite for a long war has abated can be found in the fact that a majority of Americans still favor withdrawing troops from Iraq according to a fixed timetable, this despite the fact that American casualties have declined sharply over the last few months.

No one disputes that the security situation in Iraq has improved, and our troops deserve much of the credit. They have adapted to a new form of warfare, one that exposes them to greater risk in the short term in the hope that closer contact with the population will win the respect, and ultimately the support, of the Iraqi people against the insurgents. So far, so good. Many Iraqis seem to appreciate the enormous sacrifices and risks that our troops are making on their behalf every day. And there are a number of stories and anecdotes of Iraqis taking charge of security in their towns and neighborhoods.

But the deals cut over the past year with predominantly Sunni tribes also carry risks. If these groups remain opposed to reconciliation with the Shiite majority, arming these individuals might prove a short-term strategy that cuts against our medium-to-long-term objective of a stable, Iraqi government that is capable of defending itself. Absent political reconciliation on a national level, we might actually be arming several sides of a multisided civil war.

Advocates for keeping troops in Iraq seize upon fears of an incipient civil war to make their case. Sens. McCain and Lieberman don't want the troops to come home. Certainly not any time soon, and perhaps not ever.

Critics pounced last summer when President Bush and Secretary of Defense Gates drew parallels between Iraq and Korea, where U.S. troops have been deployed since 1950. Sen. McCain apparently sees nothing wrong with such comparisons; last week he said U.S. troops might be in Iraq for 100 years.

The surge was certainly successful in one sense: it took sufficient steam out of the "get out now" movement to effectively halt congressional efforts to force a troop withdrawal. It also allowed Sen. McCain to resurrect his moribund campaign. "Thank God [Iraq]'s off the front pages," the leading proponent for the war told reporters on board the Straight Talk Express.

The vast majority of Americans, however, are still thinking about Iraq, even if it is "off the front pages," and their calculation of costs and benefits is very different from Sen. McCain's. For these people, myself included, 100 years in Iraq, at a cost of $100 billion or more every year, doesn't look like success. It still looks like failure.

All balls, no brains: Retired Brig. Gen. speaks out

Wanna read something really dumb, scary, and ungrammatical from a retired USAF Brigadier General? Unfortunately, military service does not grant somebody automatic wisdom in foreign affairs. Here are some of his dumber statements, and my responses:

> "Radical Islam has been attacking the West since the seventh century."

Huh?

> "Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran."It's laughable to say that Afghanistan had a regime, the Taleban. It had chaos and warlordism. That's what it has today, after the (temporary) defeat of the Taleban. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, pre- and post-NATO.

And it's a gross oversimplification to imply that Syria and Iran are keeping the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq "hot." If Syria and Iran butted out tomorrow, we would see little difference on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.

> "Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran , which they will obviously do if we pull out [of Iraq]? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE to this country at any price."
Many Mideast states, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, are extremely worried about Iran's rise (thanks to our removal of Iran's neighbor and military rival, Saddam Hussein). It is certainly not "obvious" that they will support Iran once we pull out of Iraq. And for the record, America gets most of its oil from Canada and Venezuela, not the Mideast. The world price of oil will certainly go up if we attack Iran, but America's sources of oil will not dry up overnight.

> "If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over."
Moronic. Iran is not the source of conflict in Iraq. This is a conflict among Iraqis to control Iraq's territory and oil resources.

> "By the way, it is not a war [in Iraq]. The war was won four years ago. It is martial law that is under attack by Iranian and Syrian outside influences, and there is a difference."
Well, I agree Afghanistan and Iraq are not "wars." These are foreign occupations of hostile populations who want to control their own destiny. Then why treat it like a war? Why insist exclusively, or at least mainly, on military means to "win" it? Why does Brig. Gen. Jim Cash include the final quote from Gen. Curtis LeMay: "I'll tell you what war is all about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting"?

Afghanistan and Iraq are ugly, modern conflicts. Vietnam was preparation for low-scale guerrilla fighting, but these conflicts are much uglier because there's no organized enemy to fight: there is no VietCong, only rag-tag local militias and guerrillas. We are fighting against everyone and no one at the same time. Brig. Gen. Cash military "vocabulary" is stunted because these conflicts have no historical antecedent in his, or America's, military experience. Men like him search in vain for some war to compare these very complicated conflicts to, in order to shore up shrinking domestic support.

> "I am not a Republican."
This guy and Bill O'Reilly think there's some credibility to be gained by lambasting Democrats and liberals at every possible turn, but then declaring, "Oh, but I'm an independent, I'm not a Republican." Who do they think they're kidding? If they can't even be honest about their political affiliations, why should I trust anything else they have to say? Let's just be clear: this guy, and Bill O'Reilly, are both Republicans. Maybe he voted for his Democratic cousin for local school board; but that doesn't make him an Independent. You know what they say: If it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck....


Middle East Imperative
By Jim Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.

I wrote recently about the war in Iraq and the larger war against radical Islam, eliciting a number of responses. Let me try and put this conflict in proper perspective. Understand, the current battle we are engaged in is much bigger than just Iraq. What happens in the next year will affect this country and how our kids and grand kids live throughout their lifetime, and beyond. Radical Islam has been attacking the West since the seventh century. They have been defeated in the past and decimated to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover. But they can never be totally defeated. Their birth rates are so far beyond civilized world rates that in time they recover and attempt to dominate again.

There are eight terror-sponsoring countries that make up the grand threat to the West. Two , Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, just need firm pressure from the West to make major reforms. They need to decide who they are really going to support and commit to that support. That answer is simple. They both will support who they think will hang in there until the end, and win. We are not sending very good signals in that direction right now, thanks to the Democrats. The other six, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya will require regime change or a major policy shift. Now, let's look more closely.

Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran . We have scared Gaddafi's pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don't think Libya is now a threat.

North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side. So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability. In 1989 I served as a Command Director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado for almost three years [sic]. My job there was to observe (through classified means) every missile shot anywhere in the world and assess if it was a threat to the US or Canada. If any shot was threatening to either nation I had only minutes to advise the President, as he had only minutes to respond. I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousand of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply.

At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat. Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance, they are convinced they will win, because the US is so divided, and the Democrats (who now control Congress and may control the Presidency in 2008) have openly said we are pulling out.

Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran , which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE to this country at any price. I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program---declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade.

Yes, it is about oil. The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the "good-old-days". The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over.

One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war---if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age. I urge you to read the book "END GAME" by two of our best Middle East experts, true American patriots and retired military generals, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney. They are our finest, and totally honest in their assessment of why victory in the Middle East is so important, and how it can be won. Proceeds for the book go directly to memorial fund for our fallen soldiers who served the country during the war on terror. You can find that book by going to the Internet through Stand-up America at www. osprey radio. us < http://www.ospreyradio.us/ or http://www.rightalk.com/ < http://www.rightalk.com/. On the other hand, we have several very angry retired generals today, who evidently have not achieved their lofty goals, and insist on ranting and raving about the war. They are wrong, and doing the country great harm by giving a certain political party reason to use them as experts to back their anti-war claims.

You may be one of those who believe nothing could ever be terrible enough to support our going to war. If that is the case I should stop here, as that level of thinking approaches mental disability in this day and age. It is right up there with alien abductions and high altitude seeding through government aircraft contrails. I helped produced those contrails for almost 30 years, and I can assure you we were not seeding the atmosphere. The human race is a war-like population, and if a country is not willing to protect itself, it deserves the consequences. Nuff-said!!!

Now, my last comments will get to the nerve. They will be on politics. I am not a Republican. And, George Bush has made enough mistakes as President to insure [sic] my feelings about that for the rest of my life. However, the Democratic Party has moved so far left, they have made me support those farther to the right. I am a conservative who totally supports the Constitution of this country. The only difference between the United States and the South American, third world, dictator infested and ever-changing South American governments [sic], is our US Constitution.

This Republic (note I did not say Democracy) is the longest standing the world has ever known, but it is vulnerable. It would take so little to change it through economic upheaval. There was a time when politicians could disagree, but still work [sic] together. We are past that time, and that is the initial step toward the downfall of our form of government.

I think that many view Bush-hating as payback time. The Republicans hated the Clinton's [sic] and now the Democrats hate Bush. So, both parties are putting their hate toward willingness to do anything for political dominance to include lying and always taking the opposite stand just for the sake of being opposed. JUST HOW GOOD IS THAT FOR OUR COUNTRY? In my lifetime, after serving in uniform for President's Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I have a pretty good feel for which party supported our military, and what military life was like under each of their terms. And, let me assure you that times were best under the Republicans.

Service under Jimmy Carter was devastating for all branches of the military. And, Ronald Regan was truly a salvation. You can choose to listen to enriched newscasters, and foolish people like John Murtha (he is no war hero), Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda , Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and on-and-on to include the true fools in Hollywood if you like. If you do, your conclusions will be totally wrong.

The reason that I write, appear on radio talk shows, and do everything I can to denounce those people is simple. THEY ARE PUTTING THEIR THIRST FOR POLITICAL POWER AND QUEST FOR VICTORY IN 2008 ABOVE WHAT IS BEST FOR THIS COUNTRY. I cannot abide that. Pelosi clearly defied the Logan Act by going to Syria , which should have lead to imprisonment of three years and a heavy fine. Jane Fonda did more to prolong the Vietnam war longer than any other human being (as acknowledged by Ho Chi Minh in his writing before he died). She truly should have been indicted for treason, along with her radical husband, Tom Hayden, and forced to pay the consequences. This country has started to soften by not enforcing its laws, which is another indication of a Republic about to fall. All Democrats, along with the Hollywood elite, are sending us headlong into a total defeat in the Middle East, which will finally give Iran total dominance in the region. A lack of oil in the near future will be the final straw that dooms this Republic.& nbsp; However, if we refuse to let this happen and really get serious about an energy self-sufficiency program, this can be avoided. I am afraid, however, that we are going in the opposite direction. If we elect Hillary Clinton and a Democrat controlled [sic] congress, and they carry through with allowing Iran to take control of the Middle East, continue to refuse development of nuclear energy, refuse to allow drilling for new oil, and continue to do nothing but oppose everything Bush, it will be over in terms of what we view as the good life in the USA .. Now, do I think that all who do not support the war are un-American [sic] -- of course not. They just do not understand the importance of total victory in that region.

[Please define "total victory!" -- J]

Another failure of George Bush is his inability to explain to the American people why we are there, and why we MUST win. By the way, it is not a war. The war was won four years ago. It is martial law that is under attack by Iranian and Syrian outside influences, and there is a difference.

So, what do I believe? What is the bottom line? I will simply say that the Democratic Party has fielded the foulest, power hungry, anti-country, self absorbed group of individuals that I have observed in my lifetime. Our educational system is partially to blame for allowing the mass of America to be taken in by this group. George Bush has done the best he can with the disabilities that he possesses.

A President must communicate with the people. And, I would tell you that Desert Storm spoiled the people. Bush Senior's 100-hour war convinced the people that technology has progressed to the point that wars could be fought with no casualties and won in very short periods of time. I remember feeling at the time, that this was a tragedy for the US military. To win wars, you must put boots on the ground. When you put boots on the ground, soldiers are going to die. A President must make the war decision wisely, and insure [sic] that the cause is right before using his last political option. However, CONTROLLING IRAN AND DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE ONLY CHOICE IF WE ARE HELL-BENT ON DEPENDING ON THEM FOR OUR FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS.

Jimmy L. Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret. Lakeside , Montana 59922

"I'll tell you what war is all about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting." Gen. Curtis LeMay

MSM 'surge' in support of the 'surge'

Now that many of you have been persuaded by the conservative -- yes, conservative -- MSM that the "surge" is working (whatever that means to whomever is saying it...), read this and get a dose of reality.


Un-Selling the Surge
Matthew Duss | November 20, 2007 | Prospect.org

Despite growing disenchantment with the war in Iraq, the well-organized conservative propaganda machine has been hard at work selling the "success of the surge." After relentlessly promoting the invasion of Iraq in the wake of 9-11, then denying or shifting blame for that invasion's negative repercussions, the neocons have now begun attacking anyone who challenges their "surge success" narrative for being defeatist and dishonoring the troops. Having moved the goalposts all the way up onto the line of scrimmage, the right now condemns anyone who will not recognize a touchdown.

At The Weekly Standard, home base of the surgeniks, James Ceaser asks: "Will any of the Democratic candidates be able to summon the courage to concede an American victory in Iraq? No one, of course, can know the ultimate outcome of this long war. But the vaunted 'facts on the ground' now at least admit a trend leading to what might reasonably be called victory." Stirring.

Kimberly Kagan, whose husband Fred Kagan helped devise the surge strategy, demonstrates the right's peculiar new metric. "Clearly," Kagan writes in the Standard, "this skillful military operation has created new realities on the ground. With violence falling sharply, Iraqis are no longer mobilizing for full-scale civil war, as they were at the end of 2006." Is this the soft bigotry of low expectations?

In what must be one of the more egregious instances of projection in recent memory, an editorial in the National Review accuses Democrats of living in a "fantasyland" for ignoring the surge's success, shamefully insisting that to disagree with conservative spin is to "deny the sacrifice and achievement" of our troops.

It doesn't wash.

Yes, there has been a drop in violence. This is primarily the result of two things: The completion of large-scale sectarian cleansing in formerly mixed areas, and a revolt among Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a revolt whose origins clearly predated the surge. Gen. David Petraeus deserves credit for adapting his counterinsurgency plan to this development, but it is not clear that the surge in troops contributed in any significant way to the developments now being presented as success. Moreover, in supporting the Sunni tribes' fight against AQI, the U.S. has simply helped to contain a problem of its own creation, as al-Qaeda was not present in Iraq in any significant way before the 2003 invasion.

[Finally somebody made this obvious observation. To help clean up a mess you created in the first place is certainly not "victory." -- J ]

Furthermore, by creating a new jihad front, the war in Iraq has given another generation of fundamentalist mujahideen its own Afghanistan. In the words of one Iraqi Arab observer, "The Arabs went to Afghanistan and got a master's in violent Jihad, but in Iraq they're all getting Ph.Ds." We have given them the opportunity to develop tactical and technological expertise against the most formidable military in existence, expertise that they have transmitted around the world. This is something that will not be reversed, even if AQI is completely eradicated.

The stated goal of the surge was Iraqi national reconciliation. There is no evidence that we have moved any closer to this goal -- in fact there is evidence for the opposite. Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress states that "the current policy of supporting 'bottom up' security initiatives means that the U.S. military is actually cooperating with sectarian cleansers and in some cases serial murderers." A recent New Yorker article focused on the western Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya. This neighborhood serves as one of Petraeus' showpieces for the success of his strategy, yet many of the former insurgents newly recruited into the U.S.-backed security service are interested in little more than using their new authority to exact revenge on Shiites -- now with the U.S.' imprimatur.

The two major Shia militias, the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council's Badr Brigade and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, are locked in a struggle for control of oil-rich southern Iraq. Despite a cease-fire agreement between Sadr and Abd al Aziz al-Hakim, the two factions have given no sign of reconciliation, their loyalists continue to engage in fierce turf warfare, and many believe that the two groups are preparing for a new round of more intense battle.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani's influence has waned significantly, as evidenced by the lack of acclaim for his blessing of Sunni leader Tarek al Hashemi's proposed national compact, which two years ago would have been considered hugely significant. One of the great tragedies of the botched post-war is that Sistani's recognition of the principle of popular sovereignty, which could have had revolutionary implications, was overshadowed by the unremitting violence. There is simply no overstating the significance of one of the most revered Grand Ayatollah acknowledging that legitimate political authority has a source other than the Qur'an, and there is no overstating how tragic it was that this potential reformation was cut short, drowned in the deluge of sectarian violence, as if Martin Luther had been mugged on his way to the Wittenberg church.

Despite constant charges of Iranian funding, Iraqi insurgent groups have become largely self-funded through a series of scams, extortion, smuggling, and other organized criminal activity. American officers have recognized that Iran has also seriously clamped down on smuggling through its borders, resulting in fewer IEDs, something that surgeniks again have tried to credit the surge for. But, of course, the administration's focus on Iran was always a way to draw attention from its own failures. The central problem in Iraq has been, and continues to be, the atomization of Iraqi society after decades of brutal Ba'athist rule and the anarchy following the U.S. invasion. Despite some security gains, this problem persists. Marc Lynch of George Washington University writes, "Without institutionalized control over the means of violence and a meaningful political bargain at the center, I just do not see any way to prevent a spiral into sectarian warfare. ... The current strategy is accelerating Iraq's descent into a warlord state even if violence is temporarily down."

But Iraq is no longer just about Iraq. Bush's entire Middle East policy since the invasion of Iraq has been a series of measures designed to deal with the various unforeseen and unprepared for disasters resulting from the invasion of Iraq. Even after Bush has left office, U.S. policy in the Middle East will be, for the foreseeable future, based on containing the regional fallout from the invasion.

Pointing this out is not meant to dishonor the sweat and sacrifices of American troops (or the sacrifice of the families who desperately want them home), only to make the broader point that Bush and his water-carriers in the right-wing media are clutching at anything that can conceivably help them keep the high ground in a losing ideological battle, even standing upon the already-overburdened shoulders of our troops.

By next week, there will be 175,000 American troops in Iraq -- the most since the invasion. Ironically, this comes at a time when American public disapproval of the war is at its highest. A full 68 percent of the American public disapproves of the Iraq War, so it's understandable why we're seeing this big propaganda push. To a great extent, the president and his enablers have treated the war in Iraq first and foremost as a message problem, something to be defended with clever arguments, not to be won with better policies. For them, the central front in the war on terror has always been the American media, and the near enemy has always been domestic political opposition. Neoconservatives have constructed a deeply divisive and disingenuous political narrative in which the return to merely unacceptable levels of violence in Iraq is evidence of victory, and disagreement is evidence of "not supporting the troops."

But don't be fooled: This isn't victory. It's not even close.

Dubya: 'We're kicking ass' in Iraq

Sweet! Bush told Australia "We're kicking ass" in Iraq! Take that, Iraq!

It's about time we gave up on this democracy shit and started KICKING SOME ASS! That's something we know how to do, baby! Woo-hoo! Rock on, W!



By George: Now It's All the Way With Howard J
By Phillip Coorey

September 6, 2007 | Sydney Morning Herald

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/by-george-now-its-all-the-way-with-howard-j/2007/09/05/1188783320123.html

Krauthammer on Iraq: I Knew It All Along

This is Charles Krauthammer at his most smug and infuriating. Reading this I asked myself, "Are we talking about the same Iraq?" and, "Is he mentally retarded or just pure evil?"

I've inserted my comments into the body of this stinking beast….

Now We're Getting Somewhere
The Iraq debate comes to Earth.
By Charles Krauthammer
August 24, 2007 | Washington Post

After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so.

In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities on the ground in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both critics and supporters of the war, agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster.

[I want to come up with an analogy that illustrates the profound absurdity of this statement, since Krauthammer is not the only one saying it. Even Hillary is uttering this nonsense. Saying that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the same time the government remains a disaster is like a dentist telling his patient, "Your surgery yielded considerable progress, although you still have no teeth." Somebody help me out, if you can do better!.... -- J ]

The latest report from the battlefield is from Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong Iraq-war critic. He returned saying essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest being Brian Baird (D., Wash.): Al Qaeda has been seriously set back as Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, and other provinces switched from the insurgency to our side.

[Blowback, blowback, blowback. We're arming and funding Sunni ex-insurgents in exchange for their not shooting at us. Krauthammer calls that "switching to our side." What's to prevent them from switching back… Scout's honor? This risky strategy is bound to go south on us. At the very least it's pissing off the Shi'ite militias, who aren't getting free cash and weapons from Uncle Sam like the Sunnis are. To them, America is choosing sides in a civil war. – J]

As critics acknowledge military improvement, the administration is finally beginning to concede the political reality that the Maliki government is hopeless. Bush's own national-security adviser had said as much in a leaked memo back in November. I and others have been arguing that for months. And when Levin returned and openly called for the Iraqi parliament to vote out the Maliki government, the president pointedly refused to contradict him.

[This is what we call "the Washington narrative." The current Washington narrative is that the Iraqi government would be doing fine if it weren't for the "hopeless" al-Maliki. Don't you believe this baloney for a second! It is yet another blame & delay tactic: blame Maliki for the absence of political reconciliation; delay until the U.S. can install a more "effective" puppet leader. They're jerking us around – again! Don't let them delay and draw this thing out another 6 months, another 12 months, always blaming this or that, and promising that things will get better if we only do a, b, and c. That's what they've been saying for 5 years. Enough already! – J]

This convergence about the actual situation in Baghdad will take some of the drama out the highly anticipated Petraeus moment next month. We know what the general and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are going to say when they testify before Congress because multiple sources have already told us what is happening on the ground.

[We knew what Petraeus and Crocker were going to say 6 months ago! "Well, we have good news and bad news, but more good news than bad, so we should stay in Iraq just a little longer." – J]

There will, of course, be the Harry Reids and those on the far Left who will deny inconvenient reality. Reid will continue to call the surge a failure, as he has since even before it began. And the Left will continue to portray Gen. David Petraeus as an unscrupulous commander quite prepared to send his troops into a hopeless battle in order to advance his political ambitions (although exactly how that works is not clear).

But the serious voices will prevail. When the Democratic presidential frontrunner concedes that the surge "is working" (albeit very late) against the insurgency, and when Petraeus himself concedes that the surge cannot continue indefinitely, making inevitable a drawdown of troops sometime in the middle of next year, the terms of the Iraq debate become narrow and the policy question simple: What do we do right now — continue the surge or cut it short and begin withdrawal?

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.

The problem with this argument is that it confuses long term and short term. In the longer run, there must be a national unity government. [Wow, what a casual assertion. Please define the "longer run," because in the long run we'll all be dead, and I want to live long enough to see Iraq's unity government! – J] But in the shorter term, our assumption that a national unity government is required to pacify the Sunni insurgency turned out to be false. The Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda and are gradually switching sides in the absence of any oil, federalism, or de-Baathification deal coming out of Baghdad.

In the interim, the surge is advancing our two immediate objectives in Iraq: (a) to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and prevent the emergence of an al-Qaeda mini-state, and (b) to pacify the Sunni insurgency, which began the post-liberation downward spiral of sectarian bloodshed, economic stagnation and aborted reconstruction.

[Are those really are two immediate objectives in Iraq? I can't be sure. Bush hasn't told us lately what our objectives are, except "getting the job done." – J]

Levin is right that we require a truly national government in Baghdad to obtain our ultimate objective of what O'Hanlon and Pollack call "sustainable stability." The administration had vainly hoped that the surge would provide a window for the Maliki government to reform and become that kind of government. It will not.

We should have given up on Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi Parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

[Krauthammer casually tosses yet another rhetorical grenade into the debate…. Think about what he's really saying: America should decide who runs Iraq. If that's the case, then Iraqis don't have a democracy. It's that simple. If Maliki can be replaced on a whim by the U.S., then the Shi'ite cleric and militia leader al-Sadr is right: Maliki is just an "American puppet."

Also, his phrase "We should have given up on Maliki long ago" gave me a laugh. Again, how does Krauthammer define "long ago?" Does "long ago" mean before the 'surge' began in earnest on June 15, or before the 'surge' was announced in January, or some time after April 2006 when Maliki became prime minister? If Krauthammer was sure "long ago" that Maliki was hopeless and there could be no political reconciliation with him in power, then why in the world did Krauthammer support the 'surge' in January-February 2006, whose real objective was to give Iraq's politicians "breathing space" (Bush's words) to hammer out a political compromise? Wouldn't Krauthammer have known that the 'surge' would be a waste of time??

The point is that Krauthammer and most other war apologists have known all along the 'surge' would be a waste of time, blood, and treasure. What they want is to keep the Iraq occupation going as long as possible, and they'll use any pretext that's convenient. – J]

The choice is difficult because replacing the Maliki government will take time and because there is no guarantee of ultimate political success. [Man, do you remember when we could just roll in and take down the whole Iraqi government in like 2 weeks? Ah, the good old days! – J] Nonetheless, continuing the surge while finally trying to change the central government is the most rational choice because the only available alternative is defeat — a defeat that is not at all inevitable and would be both catastrophic and self-inflicted.

U.S. Nat'l Intel Estimate: 'Surge' not succeeding

Intelligence report at odds with U.S. policies on Iraq
By Damien Cave
August 24, 2007 | International Herald Tribune

BAGHDAD: The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate has effectively discredited the dominant American hypothesis of the past seven months: that safer streets, secured by additional troops, would create enough political calm for Iraq's leaders to reconcile.

They have failed to do so in part, suggests the report, which was released Thursday, because the security gains remain too modest to reverse Iraq's dynamic of violence and fear. Baghdad after all, remains a place where women at the market avoid buying river fish for fear that they've been eating bodies.

But just as important, according to Iraqi political analysts and officials, Iraq has become a cellular nation, dividing and redividing, where the constituency for chaos now outnumbers the constituency for compromise.

The central government has not held. Provinces and even neighborhoods have become the stage where power struggles play out, and as a result, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - or elements of each faction - have come to feel that they could do a better job on their own.

"No one can rely on the political participants who lack a common view of the public interest," said Nabeel Mahmoud, an international relations professor at Baghdad University. "Such a concept is completely absent from the thinking of the political powers in Iraq's government, so each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources."

The Kurds are perhaps best positioned to benefit from the government's failures. Inside their already-autonomous area, cities like Erbil are experiencing a construction boom and already seem entirely disconnected from the rest of Iraqi life. This month the Kurds went even further, passing a regional oil law that would reach its full potential only if a national oil law was never implemented.

Shiites and Sunnis, however, are still the factions with the greatest responsibility for Iraq's political stalemate, and the ones most able to benefit from the dysfunctional status quo.

Shiites in particular, as the majority, have managed to take advantage of the weak government from a number of angles.

Various religious parties in majority-Shiite areas like Basra now openly fight for positions of power. Assassinations by Shiites of Shiite officials in the south have grown more common, and with huge oil wealth located in the region, interference from Baghdad remains entirely unwelcome.

Meanwhile, in the capital, offices run by the militia and civilian organization of the populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr have opened like franchises across the city. His Mahdi army, known as Jaish al-Mahdi, now controls businesses ranging from real estate to guns to gas.

One Mahdi commander from eastern Baghdad recently estimated that the Mahdi army controls 70 percent of the gas stations throughout the capital - a figure that is hard to verify but that falls in line with what American officials describe as a sophisticated network that combines brutality with business.

The American ambassador, Ryan Crocker, for example, recently titled the organization "Jaish al-Mahdi Incorporated."

Sadr, of course, does play a role in the government. Without the support of his party, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite, would not have become prime minister. The Sadr bloc has expressed frustration with Maliki, repeatedly pulling out of the government to register discontent. And yet Sadr has yet to call for a replacement.

Many suppose that it is in part because he knows that a strong government supported by the Americans would likely crack down on what his organization has built.

"The people outside the law, the militia, the terrorists, the tribal leaders - all these people benefit," said Qasim Dawood, a Shiite member of Parliament. "There are people living on the crisis, gaining their power through the crisis."

New sources of power have also formed in the Sunni community. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in American reconstruction contracts have gone to Sunni tribal groups in Anbar who now work alongside the Americans to fight homegrown groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Similar bands of Sunni "guardians," as the American military often calls them, have formed in Diyala Province and in Sunni areas of Baghdad.

Leaders from the groups have said they would like to join the government, but according to some American officers working with the groups, their most common demand has consisted of three things: money, guns and freedom of movement. It is unclear what they will do if they are not given what they consider a fair share of power.

Lieutenant Michael Hoffman, a platoon commander with the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division in Baquba, recently described a scene in which some Baquba Guardians were outraged when he denied them an extraordinary share of a humanitarian food drop meant for some of the area's starved residents.

"There are still a lot of people who don't distinguish between being Baquba Guardians and their heritage," Hoffman said. He added that some of the volunteers he worked with had already quit.

Some Sunni leaders, nearly all of whom have pulled out of Iraq's government, said in recent weeks that they had no choice but to remain in opposition. Their communities view the government as completely opposed to Sunni interests, so signing on to legislation like a new oil law would be viewed as a mistake. Seeing the government work together - at a time when so many are invested in keeping it weak - would be seen as a cause for alarm, not celebration.

Undermining the government for some has become patriotic. As one senior Sunni leader, Saleh al-Mutlak, put it: "We have to satisfy people's frustrations."

1 in 10 Iraqis has fled the country

While Americans debate continuing the "surge" vs. withdrawal, all the Iraqis who can do so are withdrawing from Iraq. Kind of ironic, isn't it?

Sadly, the Iraqis who leave tend to be the best and brightest -- the very ones Iraq needs to build a functioning government, start businesses, and maintain universities, hospitals, and vital infrastructure. I don't blame them for leaving and neither should you -- not unless you and your family have lived in their shoes.

It's just another depressing example of how the deck is stacked against "victory" in Iraq.


Iraq's Elite Fleeing in Droves
By Amira El Ahl, Volkhard Windfuhr and Bernhard Zand
Der Spiegel | August 20, 2007


One in ten Iraqis has left the country. Baghdad's elite are trying to make ends meet in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Washington wants the United Nations to address the refugee crisis. In the meantime, the country is losing its best minds -- the very people needed to rebuild Iraq.

FOX: The 'surge' is working, but...

Slanted media coverage from FOX. What did you expect?

The "surge" is working, say U.S. Senators Levin and Warner… except it isn't. They advise dissolving the Iraqi government because it "cannot produce a political settlement."

Excuse me for quibbling, but wasn't the whole point of the surge to give Iraq's political leaders "breathing room" to settle their differences? If anything, Iraqis are farther apart. The Sunnis have boycotted al-Maliki's government. And Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shi'ite cleric and militia leader, calls the al-Maliki government "a tool for the Americans."

So, what has the surge accomplished? This just goes to show that American military power can achieve very little in effecting political change in Iraq.

Withdrawal is the only option. Iraqis must be forced to fend for themselves and settle their differences. And with true responsibility comes true dignity.

Sens. Warner and Levin Travel to Iraq, Praise Surge Results
August 20, 2007 | FoxNews.com

WASHINGTON — After a brief trip to Iraq, Sen. Carl Levin said Monday that the Iraqi Parliament should vote no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki because of its sectarian nature and leadership.

"The Maliki government is non-functional," Levin, D-Mich., said in a conference call with reporters.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the panel's top Republican, just returned from a fact-finding mission to the country. The two reported that they are encouraged by the effects of the recent U.S. military surge there, but their enthusiasm is tempered by concerns about Iraq's political climate.

"We have seen indications that the surge of additional brigades to Baghdad and its immediate vicinity and the revitalized counter-insurgency strategy being employed have produced tangible results in making several areas of the capital more secure. We are also encouraged by continuing positive results — in al-Anbar Province, from the recent decisions of some of the Sunni tribes to turn against Al Qaeda and cooperate with coalition force efforts to kill or capture its adherents," the two said in a statement issued after leaving the country.

"We remain concerned, however, that in the absence of overall national political reconciliation, we may be inadvertently helping to create another militia which will have to be dealt with in the future," the two said.

[In other words, we may be creating another "blowback" situation a la bin Laden and Afghanistan where we support and fund one armed group – the Sunni militias – only to have this strategy blow up in our faces. – J]

Speaking with reporters, Levin said he hopes when the Parliament reconvenes in the next few weeks, it will dissolve the government, which he said "cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to sectarian leaders."

Levin said "broad frustration" exists across Iraq and within the Bush administration with al-Maliki, and he noted that the Iraqi constitution provides that 25 members of Parliament can sign a petition to hold this vote.

In a separate event, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an on-again, off-again supporter of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a British newspaper on Monday that the Iraqi government is on the brink of collapse.

"Al-Maliki's government will not survive because he has proven that he will not work with important elements of the Iraqi people," the cleric was quoted by The Independent as saying.

"The prime minister is a tool for the Americans, and people see that clearly. It will probably be the Americans who decide to change him when they realize he has failed. We don't have a democracy here, we have a foreign occupation."

The trip, which included an excursion to Jordan, gave the lawmakers a chance to see progress on the ground. The two met with a host of American and Iraqi officials, including Gen. David Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The senators also met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Deputy Presidents Adil Abd Al-Mahdi and Tariq Al-Hashimi and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih.

The visit comes ahead of an expected September report from Petraeus that is to outline the 18 benchmarks laid out by Congress to measure progress in Iraq. The White House said Monday that report should be provided in open hearings on Capitol Hill on Sept. 11 or 12.

Levin and Warner said that during their meetings they had few reassurances that the Iraqi government will be able to cooperate in any meaningful way.

"In many meetings with Iraqi political leaders, of all different backgrounds, we told them of the deep impatience of the American people and the Congress with the lack of political progress, impressed upon them that time has run out in that regard, and told them of the urgent need to make the essential compromises," the lawmakers said. "In all of our meetings we witnessed a great deal of apprehension regarding the capabilities of the current Iraqi government to shed its sectarian biases and act in a unifying manner."

Levin said the Iraqi government is "stronger and more capable" than 10 months ago when Levin was last in Iraq. The Iraqis have trained 10 of 12 divisions — 163,000 troops. But he said that until U.S. troops pull out of Iraq, the country's army won't take the lead. Levin is still pushing for the U.S. to begin drawing down to well below pre-surge levels in the next four months.

Despite progress being made on the military side of the surge, Sen Levin said that without political progress the military successes won't add up to much.

"There is consensus: there is no military solution to the conflict," Levin said.

While many of the military goals have been met, opponents of the Iraq war are using the failure for reconciliation on several key political goals as ammunition to call for a withdrawal.

Without a political compromise, a lasting calm seems unlikely. However, an additional 20,000 troops are expected to rotate in by December. This is not associated with the surge but would briefly increase the numbers of U.S. soldiers in the country.