Rice Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq

AP ^ | 10/5/6 | ANNE GEARAN

[SmithL]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, making an election-season visit to Iraq, said Thursday she will tell its leaders they have limited time to settle political differences spurring sectarian and insurgent violence.

"They don't have time for endless debate of these issues," Rice said during a news conference aboard her plane. "They have really got to move forward. That is one of the messages that I'll take, but it will also be a message of support and what can we do to help."

Rice said Iraqis must resolve for themselves complex problems such as the division of oil wealth, possible changes to the national constitution and the desire for greater autonomy in various regions of the country.

"Our role is to support all the parties and indeed to press all the parties to work toward that resolution quickly because obviously the security situation is not one that can be tolerated and it is not one that is being helped by political inaction," she said.

Car bombs, as well as other explosions and shootings, killed 34 people across the country Wednesday. At least 21 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Saturday, a disproportionately high number. Most of the casualties have been in Baghdad amid a massive security sweep by American and Iraqi forces that has been going on since August.

A military transport plane that flew Rice and her party into Baghdad Thursday had had its landing delayed by 35 minutes by "indirect fire" — either from mortar rounds or rockets — in the airport area, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Rice was meeting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other officials as the sectarian spiral of revenge killings between Shiites and Sunnis threatened to undermine his government. Th

[angkor]

"The airport gets hit a lot. It's just that terrorists' aim sucks, so rarely is there damage done."

Same at Balad. We were hit with something literally every day (3x some days), but actual targeting seemed like a 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 shot. When they had a real target it would be 6 to 10 concentrated rounds, otherwise it was random and untargeted one-offs.

[Allegra]

You sure do change your tagline allot, I like to keep mine the same so I know who I am when posting. ;-D

I rarely know who I am, where I am or what I'm doing, so it all fits. ;-)

[kenavi]

And if she didn't visit Iraq during this "election season", then that would mean...

[Allegra]

A military transport plane that flew Rice and her party into Baghdad Thursday had had its landing delayed by 35 minutes by "indirect fire" — either from mortar rounds or rockets — in the airport area, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

I was going by the reference to mortars or rockets. I used to hear those things quite a lot when I was Victory. ;-)

[Wallace T.]

Two differences between current day Iraq and post-World War II Japan and Germany are that anti-American resistance was virtually nonexistent in Japan and weak in Germany (the Werewolves were few in number and dealt with summarily and with extreme prejudice) and that Iraq, unlike the other two nations, is an artificial construct rather than a more or less homogeneous country ethnically and linguistically. Additionally, Germany had some exposure to popular government during the Weimar Republic and, to a limited extent, under the Kaisers. Japan also had a degree of experience with a popularly elected Diet in the years before World War II. OTOH, in its 80 years of existence, Iraq was either an absolute monarchy or a military dictatorship.

Pacification of Iraq will be far more difficult. Iraq needs to be divided into Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish states. Kurdish Iraq must agree not to engage in wars of liberation for Kurds in Turkey or Iran and the Shi'ite state must be enjoined from allying with Iran. This is far from a perfect solution, but it would lessen ethnic conflicts. The world is better off now that Yugoslavia has been dissolved into ethnically and religiously based states. Multinational states seem to succeed only when ruled by tyrants like Marshall Tito or Saddam Hussein.

[angkor]

I guess I was there during a quiet period.

I do recall that nasty one that hit the PX courtyard last year.

[cll]

"Can anyone on this thread articulate what Bush and Rice's plan is for Iraq?"

We win, the lose (RIP President Reagan)

[reagan_fanatic]

It was probably indirect fire. The airport gets hit a lot. It's just that terrorists' aim sucks, so rarely is there damage done.

The essence of terrorism. The aim is not so much to gain anything militarily, but to sow fear and confusion.

[pleikumud]

Iraq's leadership should make sure the country's oil resources are aggressively utilized to increase national wealth. This will make Iraqis more prosperous and less inclined to follow those who want to destroy freedom.
Iraq should be exporting more oil.

Rice for President!

[Allegra]

Same at Balad. We were hit with something literally every day (3x some days), but actual targeting seemed like a 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 shot.

Yeah, one night when I was at Taji in '04, a few of us were sitting around violating General Order #1 and decided to rename all the camps.

We renamed Anaconda "Camp Incoming." ;-) Y'all had that reputation. Taji was almost as bad, though. Again, they rarely ever hit anything.

[Allegra]

Hard to believe.

Easy enough to believe if you've been around this sort of thing for a while.

[Syncro]

Where ever you are, there is always something growing in the area that will ferment...

:>)

[Justa]

It was supposedly an 87mm rocket. It impacted just outside Victory base so it was pretty far from the tarmac.

[Blue State Insurgent]

So where does the Sunni Iraqi married to the Shiite Iraqi go?

Iraq has been united for at least 4,500 now. While they were inventing civilization, literacy and the rule of law, my ancestors were probably living in caves and picking fleas off each other.

Talk of dividing Iraq into three countries only inspires the insurgents to fight against an invader bent on disintegrating their country.

Iraq has always been united and always will be united.

[Wallace T.]

So where does the Sunni Iraqi married to the Shiite Iraqi go?

The same place a Croatian married to a Serbian went when Yugoslavia broke up, or an Indian Hindu to an Indian Muslim during the partition of India, or an Irish Protestant to an Irish Catholic when the Irish Free State was established. They either choose one of the new political entities or they emigrate.

What is now northern Iraq was rarely united with Mesopotamia or Babylon in ancient times. Since the fall of Babylon to the Persians in the 6th Century BC, what now constitutes Iraq were provinces of various empires: Persian, Greco-Macedonian, Roman, Arab, Ottoman Turkish. What we now call Iraq was arbitrarily drawn up by the British and the French in the aftermath of World War I, as were the other artificial states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Even the dynasty originally established to rule the new country was not native, but imported from what is now Jordan by the British.

Even democratic multinational states have problems with nationalities who inhabit an ancestral homeland, such as the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the Scots and the Welsh in Britain, and the Quebecers in Canada. A charismatic leader or a catastrophic events could someday cause the secession of these minority nationalities. Our nation is multiethnic, not multinational. While there are high concentrations of French ancestry in Louisiana, German ancestry in Wisconsin, Italian ancestry in New Jersey, etc., these areas are not ancestral homelands in the Old World sense. Members of these ethnic groups have become Americanized, resembling in culture and manners Americans of British colonial descent more than the current residents of their ancestral homelands.

Our policy makers should not be unduly attached to lines on maps drawn by Winston Churchill 85 years ago over cigars and brandy.

[Jumper]

Wars nations can literaly afford, e.g., Viet Nam for the US whose economy propsered while that of the former USSR was put under strain to conduct.... Iraq is another of those wars prosecuted by an economy detached from the welfare of the average citizen who sees, as in Viet Nam, no stake financially in the outcome. America is truely a financial juggernut which socialism cannot crack.

Just of the communists tried during the cold war, the Islamists are spilling blood while draining their own movements lifeblood in a losing fight.

Bush stood before the camera in that month following 9-11 and told the American People, and the World listening via the MSM, that this was a war that would take about 12-years and 12-regime changes to effect. We are in year five and Afganistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Lybia and some smaller cess-pools in Africa are feeling the effects and while unsettled the pace if picking up. Do not doubt that more countries will either see a change of government or impose via markets/banking & political intanglements the WILL of the US, Aussies, Britian, Japan and India.

[Liberty Valance]

Great post.

[Harrius Magnus]

Brilliant Post.

[dfwddr]

The biggest milestone for the current POTUS is to keep a$$holes like you from dying in you home or place of business.

So far so good. Shall we stay the course ??????

[dfwddr]

you=your